مقالات رزومه دکتر امیرحسین مردانی

The effects of academic inbreeding on research productivity in each higher education system can be different. Thus, the aim of this study was to analyze the research productivity of inbred and non-inbred faculty members in the top three universities in Iran.

This quantitative descriptive study was performed using the scientometric method. The study population included inbred and non-inbred faculty members with the academic rank of assistant professor in the top three universities of Iran in the Shanghai ranking system based on an index of research productivity in three disciplinary areas of technical engineering, medical sciences and human-social sciences. Data were collected from the Scopus database.

The findings showed that inbred faculties (26%) had more publications than non-inbred ones. Furthermore, the citations and H-index of publications of inbred faculties were 24.4% and 5.1%, which were more than those of non-inbred ones, respectively. Non-inbred faculties compared to inbred ones were more successful in attracting research funding. Inbred faculties (40.26%) were more willing to intra-organizational collaboration and non-inbred faculties (13.54%) were more willing to collaborate internationally.

Overall, the results of this study indicated that the scientific effectiveness of inbred faculties was higher than that of non-inbred faculties. Moreover, the rate of obtaining funding for non-inbred faculties was higher than inbred faculties, and eventually, inbred faculties tended to collaborate within an organization, while non-inbred faculties tended to collaborate at the international level.

Designing a comprehensive model for verified relationships based on the actual tested data can help to better understand and explain the factors affecting research misconduct. The purpose of this study is to validate the model for factors affecting research misconduct in Iranian medical research.

This is a descriptive correlational study. The statistical population consisted of research and executive directors, members and experts of research ethics committees, research experts, medical journals editors, faculty members, students in medical science universities, centers and the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of Iran. Using convenience sampling, 264 people answered the questionnaires developed from the research model. Data were analyzed by the Structural Equation Modeling method and AMOS software.

The results of the Measurement Model showed that the thirteen-factor structure of this model has an acceptable fit in terms of goodness-of-fit indices. The results of all indicators related to the Structural Equation Analysis showed that the model has good fit. Of 22 theoretical relationships between the factors affecting research misconduct, 14 relationships were confirmed.

The proposed model is fit for explaining the relationships between the factors affecting research misconduct and can observe the interplay between existing factors and activities at macro, meso and micro levels of research systems.

The approach of medical ethics training courses at Tehran University of Medical Sciences to change the attitude and promote medical ethics knowledge of learners has challenges. This study aims to identify the challenges in teaching medical ethics at Tehran University of Medical Sciences.

This is a qualitative study with semi-structured interviews conducted in April 2018 at Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Using purposive sampling, 23 participants were selected from the clinicians and faculty members of medical ethics and medical students. Data were analyzed by the content analysis method.

The challenges of teaching medical ethics from the participant's point of view are classified into three themes: 1- Hidden curriculum 2- Necessity of completing medical ethics education program 3- Executive and managerial macro factors. The results showed that medical ethics training courses are not effective for changing students' behavior and their moral decision-making. There are substantial shortcomings in the current curriculum in terms of content, format, and implementation that make it unresponsive to ethical needs and concerns. Teaching medical ethics should be turned into a longitudinal theme. The duties and missions of the Department of Medical Ethics at the university are not well understood. The Department does not act as a strong executor and supervisor of medical ethics in interaction with higher authorities to pursue the requirements of effective ethics education and to ensure the implementation of ethical codes. There is no effective mechanism for evaluating the ethical performance of activists and students and giving feedback to them. There is insufficient organizational support for students' complaints and reports about the misconduct and unethical behavior of faculty or staff.

The effectiveness and efficiency of medical ethics courses to change the behavior and attitude of learners are not acceptable. Dealing with the existing challenges requires the efforts of the Medical Ethics Department to make maximum use of available resources and interact effectively with other academic departments.

This research reviews the scientific productions of the field of biomedical ethics based on articles published in Iranian scientific journals in Farsi (Persian language). The findings showed that from 2003 to 2017, researchers have published 1238 Persian articles in this field. The average annual growth rate of published articles is 23.17 percent, but this growth has been declining since 2013. The citation rate of articles (0.4 per article) suggests a small impact. Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Tehran University of Medical Sciences with the publication of 36% and 33% had the largest share in the publication of articles, respectively. Biomedical ethics research was interdisciplinary and researchers from the medical, nursing, and law sciences played a major role in compiling and publishing them. The topics such as medical ethics, medical education, and Islamic ethics were, repetitive subjects in articles, respectively. Only 22% of these articles referred directly to funding provided by universities and research centers.

To evaluate influencing factors on decision to reclassify resources in libraries of Tehran, Iran and Shahid Beheshti universalities of medical sciences.
Using desk research, the determining factors for decision on reclassification were obtained and then library managers were surveyed using a selfdesigned questionnaire.
“Executive facilities” and “perceptual factors (realizing the necessity to change), are the most determining factors to convince library managers for reclassification. Also, there are other influencing factors such as budget and continuance of library services, manager support, library collection integrity, unproper current classification and automating the change process. The less influencing factors on managers’ decisions are providing enough information and data to set purposive and proper plan for reclassification, better browsing in new classification system and ease of user training and adaptation.
Medical Libraries should employ a realistic view to evaluate factors influencing reclassification. There is no single predetermined model to prove reclassification will cause remarkable improvement.

Substantial concerns about the research integrity in Iran have caused research misconducts to be issue for studies. But adequate recognition about causal factors is a necessary part of clear and explicit policy in order to manage the research misconducts and supply the research integrity. This study attempted investigating the available evidence on the reported research misconducts in the Iranian research and its causal factors. Therefore, 30 studies on the Iranian research misconducts were studied. The detected factors to research misconducts based on the reported evidence included: 1. Structural factors such as publication pressure, scientific promotion policies, research funding and job preservation; 2. Organizational factors such as research environment, regulatory-control activities on research and teaching research activities; 3. Personal factors such as research skills, degree orientation, financial benefits, understanding and moral judgment. The analytical model of causal factors was designed. Therewith, cultural and situational factors have received less attention in the literature and they have major focus on the obvious types of research misconduct (data fabrication, Falsification and Plagiarism), especially plagiarism.

To identify how Iranian formal news agencies represent science production and evaluation using high level documents.
Using content analysis, Iranian high level documents on science and technology were analyzed and categorized into two groups of science production and science evaluation. The contents of four news agencies (Mehr, ISNA, IRNA and KHABAR ONLINE) during 2011 to 2014 were regarded.
There were 620 news about science and technology in four news agencies (61.8% on science production and 38.2% on science evaluation). The majority of science production news was around science production quantity and scientific journals and databases, while in science evaluation category, ranking of univerisites, countries and scientists were on top. The top most news contributors were The Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, Ministry of Health and Medical Education, Ministry of Education and Islamic World Science Citation Center respectively. The Iranian Parliament had the most critical views toward science production. Humanities got the most critical reviews. The highest cooccurences were among countries ranking and publication, scientific outputs and publications also countries ranking and scientific outputs.
Due to vital role of media in shaping public opinion and publishing science production discourse, it seems necessary for news agencies to consider more about science production.

This research uses of Scientometric indicators and social network analysis to evaluate the performance of countries in the field of information systems in Web of Science during 2004 to 2013. The results show that co-authorship network has 166 vertices (countries) and 21518 links (co-authorships). In general, co-authorship network of information systems had a high density than some fields and Solidarity of the network is partially good. There are no isolated component in the network and more possible links in this network have emerged. According to micro-level metrics, countries like America and Britain are recognized as the most influential countries in co-authorship network and can control the flow of information between network. Using the findings, policy-makers and planners of university in Iran can provide facilities for the formation and strengthening of collaborative connections with the important and influential countries.

The main aim of the present survey was to study the current challenge of internal evaluation in Departments of Information Science and Knowledge Study of Iran State Universities from the faculty members` point of view. The present survey method was descriptive-survey. The statistical population of this survey included all (20) departments of Information Science and Knowledge Study of Iran State Universities. As a few numbers of statistical populations, almost all of them were surveyed. Questionnaires were used to collect data. To analyze data, exploratory factor analysis test was used. The results of the survey showed that the high number of criteria and indicators was the reason for the low interest in the departments to carry out internal evaluation. Also the extent of usage of the results of such evaluations in decision-making within these departments was low. Lack of sufficient expertise to run and lack of managerial stability of departments and universities were among some of the executive challenges of the internal evaluation. The most motivational factors were the persuasive ways to faculty members, lack of incentive mechanism for rewarding the faculty, faculty members` involvements like the enforcement activities and courses. Internal evaluation as the basis for quality assurance in the departments of Information Science and Knowledge Studies is not well-established and the internal evaluation` activities seem to be only a formality.

Collaboration between researchers at domestic and international level is an extensive form of scientific collaboration emphasizing the importance and benefits of collaborative research. This study was aimed at investigating the rate of collaboration between researchers in Tehran University of Medical Sciences with their counterparts in other countries and institutions in the Web of Science publications. This was a survey using scientometrics indicators. The instrument of the study was the Web of Science in which the scientific products of Tehran University of Medical Sciences including 5781 records were investigated between 2006 and 2010. To determine the collaboration between researchers، collaboration coefficient formula was used. The authors’ collaboration coefficient mean was 0. 64 showing their high interest in collaborative research. Investigation into scientific products showed that the rate of scientific collaboration was lower at the international level (22%) than the domestic level. The results showed that the researchers in Tehran University of Medical Sciences had scientific collaboration with 69 countries. The lowest annual growth rate (3. 7) was related to international collaboration. Main partners of Tehran University of Medical Sciences were the USA، UK، and Canada، respectively. Based on the number of co-authors، the highest collaboration rate belonged to the documents with five to eight authors. This rate increased from 33% in 2006 to 45% in 2010. The findings indicated that co-authorship and collaboration in the period studied is on the rise for Tehran University of Medical Sciences suggesting researchers’ interest in scientific collaboration.

Nowadays, LibQual scale as a new tool, measures expectations more efficiently than the traditional ones. The present study aims to compare the viewpoints of students and librarians at Tehran University of Medical Sciences to determine the quality of library services with LibQual model, The present study was an analytical survey. Method. LibQual questionnaire was used for data collection. In this study 231 users and 30 were selected through simple random sampling. of the questionnaire was measured by Cranach’s Alpha test was used to ensure the reliability of the data gathering tool. Mann-Whitney and Wilcoxon tests were used. The results showed that the users evaluate the current quality of services lower than what the librarians did. This difference of opinion is much more drastic when evaluating the information control subscale. Service superiority gap was estimated to be 2.8 for the overall library services and the said libraries fall fairly short of providing users with the desired level of services. From the users’ point of view, the three subscales of LibQual do not have an equal effect on the quality of the provided services whereas the librarians disagree with an equal effectiveness of the subscales. The librarians have a correct understanding of the users’ expectations and the gap between the users’ expectations and the librarians’ perceptions of their needs and demands was very small (0.18). This study showed that LibQual as a model of evaluating the quality of services could help in providing information that facilitates the improvement of planned services at Tehran University of Medical Sciences libraries. By providing the necessary facilities and services to users, librarians can offer services to users with known expectations and needs. Therefore, if there are shortcomings in the quality of services, it is not because librarians are unaware of the users’ needs, but rather lack of necessary facilities might be the reason.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate the knowledge productions of Iranian researchers who had published papers on AIDS in journals and sources with impact factor indexed in the Web of Science between 2000 and 2010. The amount of scientific publications by Iranian researchers on AIDS in the Web of Science was studied with scientometric methods. 336 documents with at least one author affiliated to Iranian organizations were identified. The process of science production of Iranian researchers enjoyed an increasing annual growth rate of 30%. Iranian researchers had scientific collaboration with 22 international authors dominated by American authors. Tehran University of Medical Sciences contributed to almost one fifth of the scientific productions among national organizations. Most research studies conducted by Iranian researchers on AIDS were listed under the category of infectious diseases. 35% of the journals in which Iranian researchers published their papers were American journals. However, the journal, Hepatitis Monthly, published the highest number of papers by Iranian researchers. Iran’s share of journal publications enjoyed an upward trend internationally, and in this regard, Iranian researchers have remarkable contribution to international joint venture articles.

This research identifies the characteristics of the cited literature in 138 Library and Information Science theses submitted to Shiraz and Tehran Universities between 2001 and 2009. The findings reveal that for a total of 6010 citations compiled from the studied theses, the average number of citations for Tehran University was 46.79 and for Shiraz University it was 37.1. In both universities journals with 40.33% and books with 22.74% were respectively the most cited form of publications. Among the total citations, 3391 refered to English sources (56.42%) and 2607 citations refered to Persian resources (43.38%). The average half life for English and Persian journals of the two universities was totally calculated 11.74 years. The core English and Persian journals in Library and Information Science were identified by means of Bradford’s Law: respectively 4 and 3 titles. Subject distribution of citations shows the subjects "Information and Communication Technology (ICT)"(14.10%), "storage and retrieval of computer information" (10.90%), and "patrons and use of library" (9.74%) received the highest number of citations. Geographical distribution of citations revealed that Iran, the U.S.A., and Britain were the most cited places of publication, each with 45.42, 26.83 and 14.27 percentages respectively.

The present study aims to investigate the status and amount of self-citation in papers written by faculty members of University of Tehran in journals "Social Sciences Letters" and "Geographical Studies" during 1999 and 2008. To reach the goal, 212 papers were scrutinized using citation analysis method, which included 4565 citations. The research findings indicate that a considerable number of the articles, i.e. approximately half of them, in these two journals include self-citation. In addition, one third of the authors have used self-citation in their papers. The average level of self-citation in the journals “Social Sciences Letters” and “Geographical Studies” was obtained to be 0.8% and 0.6%, respectively. Annual investigation of the articles revealed that self-citation does not occur with a regulated rate, and that regarding the document type, the most cited documents in the journals’ articles were the articles previously published in these two journals. Furthermore, a significant difference exists between the amount of self-citation and number of authors in articles. Scrutinizing the self-citation life cycle, it was also identified that about 46% of self-citations are in a two-year time period before the publication of the corresponding papers and that, the authors in their citation behavior have more cited their own recent articles.

It is generally assumed that distance learning is considered as an inescapable step forward for developing countries. Traditional education in developing countries can no longer respond and bend to the demands due to explosive population growth, economic constraints and over-demand for education. Given the pressure brought to bear on these countries to join the developed and information-rich world, it seems that distance education would provide a better education for a larger number of people at lower cost. The present paper attempts to investigate the status of distance education in Library and information science, expand on the challenges and opportunities it poses for the educational systems in the developing countries and to provide a more realistic link between education and development in such communities.