A Survey of Scientific Publication by the Islamic Azad University from Beginning to ‎February 2013‎

The goal of this paper is evaluation of published scientific documents of Islamic Azad University (IAU) in WOS from the beginning until Feb. 2013. The method of this study was extracting of all published IAU documents that have been indexed in WOS in all field of Science, Social Science and Art & Humanity. Research findings show that in this period, 18398 scientific documents have been published by IAU that is about 12.42% of Iran’s total published scientific documents from 1956 until the present time. Clustering of the journals based on topic indicated that 22.72% of documents are related to Chemistry, 14.45% related to Engineering Sciences, and 8.92% published in Physics. The increasing number of IAU documents from Jan. 1999 until Feb. 2013 is significant. In 2012, the IAU reached the first position of scientific documents production among all Iranian universities. Most scientific collaborations of IAU in scientific publication have been with US, followed by Malaysia, England, Germany, Turkey, and Australia. More than 4700 IAU documents have been published in 37 journals, 8 of them lack or have a poor peer-review process. At the end, a number of suggestions for increasing quality of IAU’s scientific documents have been offered.