Attitudes of Academic Members of Iranian Medical Universities towards Factors that Increase h-index and Paper Citations

Nowadays, several indicators are used to evaluate scientific research outputs. The h index is one of the most common indices taken into account by many authorities to assess individuals and institutions, worldwide. In this study, the attitudes of medical sciences researchers towards significance of factors affecting the h index and citations were investigated. At the beginning of 2008, h-indices of all academic members of Iranian medical universities were screened based on the Scopus database. The attitudes of the faculty members who had an h index of one or more were investigated through a self-structured questionnaire in which increasing factors of the h index and paper citations was assessed. The data were analyzed using statistical methods. The r esponse rate was about 37%. The respondents’ attitudes toward the items were not different between the the group whose h-index was more than 6 to the other group whose h-index was less than 6. They respondents believed that publishing in high Impact Factor journals, well-designed researches considering the methodology, and to be the 1st study of its subject in the country and the world, are the most important factors in achieving citations. They did not believe that publishing review articles, contributing internationally, and having frequent paper topics were important in gaining citations. It seems that our researchers were not aware of the importance of publishing review articles and also in Open Access journals to increase citation rates. Proper interventions should be conducted to correct this attitude in order to increase the country’s and researchers’ citations.