The Evolution of Scientometrics Studies in Iran

The aim of the present study is to identify the evolution of researches and scientific concepts of scientometrics. The method of this research is co-word analysis which is a skill in analyzing the content as well as a method in scientometrics. The research community includes all outputs produced by Iranian researchers in the format of books، articles، thesis، and research proposals done outside and inside of Iran، including printed or electronic ones from 1982 to 2014. The results of the research include: the trend of scientific outputs; the levels and research approaches، more frequently used concepts، evolution of the concepts and the interdisciplinary relationships in this field. The results indicate، the research in this field in Iran has made a significant leap and its average growth rate has been 32 percent since 2005. Furthermore in these years 1800 concepts have been proposed in this domain. Other investigations show that concepts like “evaluation of scientific outputs، knowledge production and citation analysis” respectively with a quantitative approach are the dominant concepts of this field in Iran. Also، the conceptual structure of scientometrics has changed over time، so that some concepts have faded and other concepts have emerged during this time. Other results of the study showed that this field has interdisciplinary relations with some 22 scientific disciplines and has the most relevant conceptual relations with the fields of information technology، social sciences and management. The overall results of the research showed the scientific leap of this field in Iran is mostly quantitative and to some degree qualitative.