Journal of Modern Medical

Introduction
Research is a way to understand the laws governing the world, which shows the importance of clarifying the development path. The increasing tendency of scholars in various fields also indicates this issue, but the studies have shown that the quantitative increase of research has not led to its qualitative growth, while the main goal of research is to move from the existing situation to the desired situation. The evidence in Iran indicates that in some cases, the achievements of some researches not only have not led to solving the problems, but also have caused a waste of costs and resources; this is while the funding for scientific research in Iran is limited. On the other hand, there is a gap between the needs of the society and the conducted researches. Experts believe that since the educational system of Iran has been imported from other countries and is dependent on non-indigenous educational programs, it has caused research Iran to be carried without attention to the needs of society and essential priorities; the consequences of this trend have caused scholars to tend to conduct fast-yielding, taste-oriented, repetitive researches and report problems instead of solving them; the lofty goal of research has been declined from improving human life conditions to just obtaining an academic degree or a having a temporary activity. The field of Medical Library and Information Science is not an exception to this rule, and the lack of resources makes it necessary to pay attention to priorities in this field. Therefore, this study aims to identify the research priorities in this field from the point of view of faculty members and PhD students [2]. 
Methods
The is a descriptive survey study that was conducted in 2020. Participants were 45 PhD students in the field of Medical Library and Information Sciences and 38 faculty members in this field of study from different medical universities in Iran. Data collection was done by a questionnaire after obtaining informed consent from the participants. This questionnaire had two parts. The first part was a demographic form; for the faculty members, it surveyed gender, university of service, academic rank; for the students, it surveyed gender and university of study. The second part contained 113 research topics; the respondents were asked to comment on the importance of these topics based on a five-point Likert scale. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed by the experts and its reliability using Cronbach’s alpha was obtained 0.98. A total of 64 questionnaires were collected, whose data were analyzed in SPSS statistical software using descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation and inferential statistics such as t-test and Friedman test.
Results
The results of Friedman’s test (Table 1) showed that research priorities from the perspective of faculty members were education (Mean=4.01), entrepreneurship (Mean=3.96) and research (Mean=3.80); from the students’ point of view, the research priorities were evidence-based practice (Mean=4.15), information literacy (Mean=3.87) and education (Mean=3.76).


Discussion
The purpose of this study was to identify the research priorities of Iranian faculty members and PhD students in Medical Library and Information Sciences. Among the 23 priorities, the first 11 were ranked. According to faculty members, this ranking was as follows: Education, Entrepreneurship, Research, Foresight and futurology, Evidence-based practice, Digital libraries, Information literacy, User studies, Information technology, Studies on librarians, and Health information management. According to students, the ranking was as follows: Evidence-based practice, Information literacy, Education, Entrepreneurship, Information needs/Information seeking behaviors, Information systems, Research, User studies, Digital libraries, Information technology, Scientometrics and informatics. The research priorities were more towards practical issues and philosophical and theoretical issues were not very important for the participants. It seems that an effective step can be taken by creating a think tank in the research committees of the universities to assess the needs of faculty members and PhD students for determining their research priorities. Replacing traditional and theoretical topics with practical and future-based topics can be effective in preventing waste of time and resources in future studies.

Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
In this research, before distributing the questionnaire, the "informed consent form" was used. The participants were informed about the subject and method of conducting the study, and they were assured that their personal information would remain confidential (Code: IUMS.REC.1399.569).

Funding
This paper is part of a research project of "identify the research priorities of the field of medical library and information sciences from the opinion of the faculty members and PhD students of this field. supported by the Vice-Chancellor Iran University of Medical Sciences (Grant No.: 18442-15-2-99).

Authors' contributions
Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources: Zahra Akbari, Samira Soleymanpour; Investigation: Samira Soleymanpour, Shahram Sedghi; Writing-Original Draft: Zahra Akbari; Writing-Review & Editing: Zahra Akbari, Samira Soleymanpour, Shahram Sedghi; Funding Acquisition: Shahram Sedghi; Supervision, Samira Soleymanpour, Shahram Sedghi.

Conflicts of interest
The authors declare they have no conflicts of interests.


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