TEHRAN – A sum of one trillion rials (around $1.7 million) has been allocated to supporting one percent most-cited researchers nationally and globally in the current Iranian year that started on March 19.

One of the main objectives of the administration of the late President Ebrahim Raisi in science and technology was scientific progress and developing plans to achieve the goal, IRNA quoted Peyman Salehi, deputy science minister, as saying.

The official highlighted that one of the fundamental strategies to develop scientific authority is the recognition and support of individuals active in the field of science.

Therefore, the issue was put on the agenda and a draft plan was prepared and approved on June 24, 2023, he added.

900 Iranians among 1% most-cited researchers

“A total of 938 Iranian researchers have been recognized among the world's top one percent most-cited researchers in 2023,” the head of the Islamic World Science Citation (ISC) Institute said.
“The Ministry of Science, Research and Technology represents 40 percent, and the Ministry of Health, Treatment, and Medical Education accounts for 48 percent of the most-cited Iranian researchers,” ISNA quoted Ahmad Fazelzadeh as saying.

In 2023, 938 top researchers affiliated with Iranian organizations were identified, which marked a 12 percent increase compared to the previous year.

Over the past decade, the number of highly-cited researchers in the country has been growing. Medicine and Health with a 33 percent share, Multidisciplinary with 23 percent, Engineering with 20.5 percent, Basic Sciences with 12 percent, Agriculture and Environment with 10 percent, and Social and Human Sciences with 1.7 percent held the highest shares of the most-cited researchers, respectively.

One of ISC’s main responsibilities is to introduce highly-cited researchers and to provide the possibility to identify and introduce elite researchers and scholars. That is why scientific elites are the most important factor in the growth and development of scientific systems, and the number of institutions and highly-cited researchers is one of the criteria of scientific authority in the world.

The ISC Institute extracted and monitored the latest list of the world's top 1 percent most-cited Iranian researchers in 22 science subject areas based on the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) database.

In 2023, the University of Tehran, Tarbiat Modares University and Amirkabir University of Technology from the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, and Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences and Tabriz University of Medical Sciences from the Ministry of Health, Treatment, and Medical Education had the highest number of one percent researchers.

Based on 22 subject areas, 23 percent of these researchers belonged to the field of Clinical Medicine. The field of multi-disciplinary subjects with 22.6 percent and engineering with 19 percent, were ranked second and third in terms of having the greatest number of highly-cited Iranian researchers. These three fields accounted for about 65 percent of all highly-cited researchers in Iran.

MT/MG