Social Network Analysis of Iranian Researchers on Medical Parasitology: A 41 Year Co-Authorship Survey

Background: The aim of this study was to survey the Iranian Parasitology researchers' performance, and analyse and visualize the scientific outputs of their co-authorship network.

Methods: This study was conducted using scientometric method and social network analysis (SNA). The data extracted from the Web of Science (WoS) databases in July 10th 2014. Totally, 1048 documents of all types in research area of Parasitology during 1972-2013 by Iranian researches retrieved. The co-authorship map was drawn utilizing NETDRAW, Coauthor.exe, and UCINET softwares and was analysed based on SNA measures.

Results: The researchers' co-authorship network consisted of 78 authors and its density degree is 0.57. "Mohebali" ranked top in all of centrality measures. The most of the publications were related to 2012, "Mohebali" with about 9% of all documents was the Iranian most prolific author in Parasitology field. The Iranian researches have published mostly (266 documents) in "Iranian Journal of Parasitology", and the most of the documents belong to "Tropical Medicine" subject field. The most of Iranian researchers' scientific cooperation was performed with England and United States.

Conclusion: Bringing forth density degree (is 0.57) showed that this network has an almost medium density. Indeed, the authors have had relations in moderate level with each other in the network. The findings of this study can be identified aspects of scientific collaboration, and help policy makers of Parasitology field research.