Impact Assessment of Clinical Trials on Knowledge Production and Development in Iran

Recently, there has recently been an increase in the level of investments in clinical trials; therefore, the outcomes and impacts of these investments should be assessed. This study aimed to measure the impact of scientific productions of clinical trials on the knowledge production and development in Iran.
In this descriptive study bibliometric and scientometric methods were used on 5982 scientific productions of clinical trials in Iran indexed in the Web of Science database. Data were analyzed through the Excel Software, and cooperation maps were drawn using bib excel, UCINET and NetDraw Software.
According to the findings the ratio of citations to the articles on the scientific productions of clinical trials in Iran (7.78%) is more than that of articles written by Iranian authors in the ESI Database (6.06%) but less than the global ratio in the field of clinical medicine (8.65%). A total of 1140 articles (19.06%) were written in collaboration with international organizations. The ratio of citation to the authors was 5.46% and a total of 29.96% of the articles appeared without citations. The average impact factor of journals publishing papers was 2.15.
Concerning the development indices, only 19.6% of studies have been conducted in collaboration with international organizations. The impact factors of Journals on quality were lower than the average impact factor of Journals in the field. Therefore, the increase of clinical trials in Iran necessitates a serious assessment and evaluation of the impact of these studies.