Qualitative and Quantitative Status and International Visibility of Iranian Journals Indexed in Journal Citation Reports

The present study aims to investigate the international status and visibility of Iranian journals which have been indexed in Journal Citation Reports (JCR). Accordingly, the number of international papers, citations and editorial board members of each journal was studied. Moreover, various measures were utilized to compare the quality of Iranian journals with their international counterparts.
Current paper applied scientometric research method. A total of 16471 papers which published in 38 Iranian journals and indexed by the JCR 2013 were selected as the population of the study. Web of Science (WoS), JCR and journals’ website were used for data gathering.
Results of the study revealed that foreign researchers have published 34.8% of papers published in Iranian ISI journals. Moreover, only 30.6% of citations to Iranian ISI journals have been received from foreign papers or Iranian internationally collaborative papers. The results showed that Iranian researchers accounted for 66.4% of editorial board member of all studied journals, while foreign researchers only occupied 33.6% of the editorial board positions. Based on the findings, only two Iranian journals have impact factors above the median of the journals in the disciplinary category areas in which they are classified in JCR. Furthermore, only 8 Iranian journals have ever been placed in the 1st and 2nd quartile of journals of the same field in the JCR. Findings also showed that 36 out of the 38 Iranian journals have mostly cited by journals with higher median impact factors than cited journals.
The findings indicate that the share of international papers, citations and editorial board memberships is low in Iranian ISI journals. Moreover, Iranian journals’ impact factor was below of those of the leading journals.