Scientometric analysis of futures studies articles published in Iranian scientific journals.

It is very important to understand the nature of research in an academic field and the behavior of researchers in that field, especially in the case of interdisciplinary categories. The resulting understanding helps planners and researchers to have a more accurate road map to improve the future situation while understanding the past and present situation. This is also true for futures studies, especially since futures studies is inherently about the future situation, and understanding the past and its present shows which futures we have paid more attention to and which futures we have neglected. To reach this understanding, scientometric studies are needed, and in this research, its tools were used to analyze futures studies articles published in Iranian scientific journals. The population of this research was 920 articles published in the field of futures studies. The results showed what the co-authorship network looks like based on the centrality measures. Also, eight topic clusters were identified in this field and their position in the strategic diagram was determined. "Geographers in love with the future" cluster was identified as a cluster with high centrality and density. Also, "strategic foresight" and "futuristic higher education" clusters were introduced as immature and underdeveloped clusters. "Knowledge development", "Religious future", "Regional relations" and "Heavy weight of method" clusters were placed in the declining and emerging region, and the "ICT perspective" cluster was recognized as a non-core cluster.