Journal of Modern Medical

Introduction: Scientific production in each country is indicative of its development and the scientific journals are considered one of the efficient tools for scientific communication and primary characteristics of a social system development. The present research intends to visualize the distribution of scientific journals and documents in the field of medicine indexed in Scopus database during the years 1996-2012 as well as determining Iran’s position in this field.

Methods: This is an analytic descriptive study in which all published documents in the field of medicine are investigated via the output of Scopus database during the years 1996-2012. SPSS and Node XL software were used to analyze data and to draw graphs.

Results: Findings showed that ten countries produced about 70% of the scientific documents in the field of medicine. Furthermore, just 86 countries had indexed journals in Scopus the majority of which (65%) were published by developed countries. Findings showed that the most cited documents were published by developed countries including US, UK and Canada.

Conclusion: Scientific products and journals in the field of medicine have experienced an upward trend in Scopus and this was followed by a rapid increase in recent years. There was a significant relationship between the number of documents and citations.