Analysis of Research Outputs of Major Iranian Universities in the Fields of Social and Behavioral Sciences During 2010-2020

Considering that the goal of social science research is to train and provide skilled and specialized human resources to carry out research, education, management and planning in various social and cultural fields, and also considering that the main emphasis of this field is the education and promotion of excavations. A field about the social issues of the country and the analysis and interpretation of their roots, contexts, causes and factors, description and analysis of their extent in the society and finally the analysis of the information obtained from these studies is to solve social issues, therefore providing considered solutions to deal with them. With these problems and social developments, it is necessary. Considering that one of the evaluation criteria of universities and countries is the quantity and quality of their research outputs in international reliable databases. The status of each country's indexed research outputs in international valid indexes indicates an important part of that country's scientific activities at the international level. Therefore, in order to analyze scientific activities, a clear picture of this situation has always been the focus of the country's research managers. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the quality of research outputs in Iranian universities, which are considered the most important scientific hub of the country. The results of this research can be used for planning at the level of administrations, various vice-chancellors and the entire universities under review, and by knowing the priorities, abilities and weaknesses, provide the necessary facilities to make scientific activities more targeted in the subject areas of social and behavioral sciences in the universities under review.  Therefore, this research studies and analyzes the research outputs of Iran's major universities using qualitative Scientometrics indicators in the subject areas of social and behavioral sciences during the period of 2010-2020.

What is the status of the research outputs of Iran's major universities in the subject areas of social and behavioral sciences with a Scientometrics approach from the perspective of quantity and impact index based on Scopus database data during the years 2010 to 2020?

The review of the literature indicates that the quality of research outputs in Iran's major universities has been less studied over a long period of time and using multiple Scientometrics indicators. In most of the previous studies, only the average index and the percentage of documents were cited and the H index was used to study the quality level of research outputs. Therefore, according to the investigations carried out in the dimension of scientology and the need to pay attention to the quality of research outputs in addition to their quantity, the present article studies and analyzes the research outputs of major universities in Iran in the subject areas of social and behavioral sciences according to several indicators of effectiveness during the period of 2010-2020. In this way, it has helped to identify the scientific position of the universities in the subject areas of social and behavioral sciences, as well as planning for its development at the national level, and to help strengthen and improve the country's scientific rank at the international level.

The current research is of an applied type and has been carried out with a Scientometrics approach and with documentary and citation analysis methods. The community under review is all research outputs in the subject areas of social and behavioral sciences, including "subject areas of psychology, economics (economics, econometrics and finance)", "management (business, management and accounting)", "social sciences", and "sciences", decision-making", according to the subject classification of the Scopus database, in the major universities of Iran in the years 2010 to 2020. The research implementation environment was Scopus and Scival databases. Research data was collected from March 20 to March 28, 2019 from Scopus and Scival. The method of data collection is to refer directly and get standard outputs from Scopus and Scival databases. The indicators used in this research are: citations, average citations per article, H index, weighted citation impact at the field level, percentage of highly cited articles, and percentage of articles published in top journals. Descriptive statistics (with Microsoft Excel software) were used to analyze the data.

According to the results, the total number of research outputs in the subject areas of social and behavioral sciences of Iran's major universities in the target period was 19,582 records. In all the studied universities, the subject area of social sciences had the most research outputs. In general, the research outputs of Iran's major universities in the subject areas of social and behavioral sciences have been on the rise in the given period of time. The reason for this can be the increase of students and researchers in postgraduate studies. In terms of the number of citations index, Shahid Beheshti, Isfahan, Ferdowsi, Tabriz, and Shiraz universities have the most citations in the subject area of "social sciences" and in the universities of Tehran, Allameh Tabataba’i, and Tarbiat Modares, the subject area of "business, management and accounting" has the most citations. In most of the cases mentioned in the universities and subject areas under investigation that received the most citations, in terms of the index of highly cited articles at the threshold of 10% and the index of articles published in top journals at the threshold of 25%, they also took the highest percentages. This issue indicates the high quality of research outputs with more citations, which these findings are consistent with the vital and high research (2016) for this reason that the more the citations of the articles, the higher the quality. In terms of highly cited articles at the threshold of 10%, in the universities of Tehran, Tarbiat Modares, Isfahan, Ferdowsi, Tabriz, and Shiraz, the subject area of "Economics, Econometrics and Finance", and in Shahid Beheshti and Allameh Tabataba’i universities, the subject area of "Trade" "Management and accounting" got the highest percentages.

In terms of the index of articles published in top journals at the threshold of 25%, in Shahid Beheshti, Tehran, Tarbiat Modares, Ferdowsi, Tabriz universities, in the subject area of "Business, Management and Accounting", in Allameh Tabataba’i University, in the subject area of "Psychology", in universities Isfahan and Shiraz have the highest percentages in the subject area of "Social Sciences". In this regard, it has been mentioned in most of the cases that they have obtained a high percentage in terms of the index of highly cited articles at the threshold of 10% and the index of articles published in the top journals at the threshold of 25%. This issue shows the high quality of research outputs in the mentioned subject areas, which with the research of Irfan Manesh and Hosseini (2016), in terms of the impact of general impact indicators (H index, weighted citation impact index at the field level, citations) on the increase of articles published in Top journals and highly cited articles match. Since some of the indicators examined in this research, such as citations and the number of highly cited articles, are included in some ranking systems, such as the rankings of Leiden University, Saimgo University, and Shanghai University, increasing the mentioned indicators as much as possible is effective in improving the position of universities in these ranking systems.

In general, it is very important for universities to emphasize the quality of research outputs in addition to the quantity of these outputs. Attention to the quality of research outputs with the researches of Ebrahimi and Hayati (2007), Yaminifirouz et al. (2015) and Erfanmanesh and Hosseini (2018). Considering the number of received citations of the published research outputs of Iran's major universities in the review of their performance, as well as considering the special research credit and score for the authors of highly cited articles in various subject areas can be a suitable solution in this field. Also, emphasizing the quality along with the quantity of research outputs in universities and research centers should be given special attention.

We are grateful to Shahid Beheshti University Research Vice-Chancellor for their support in the implementation of this research.