Journal of Modern Medical

Introduction
The science of psychology, by examining behavior and evaluating internal states, seeks the best method to provides appropriate patterns of life. Using this science, psychologists and psychiatrists treat people’s psychological disorders and take steps towards understanding the human psyche. Gaining a deep understanding of psychology helps people gain insight into their own actions and behaviors and better understand other people. Today, the research power and scientific capacity of each country is considered as a suitable criterion for evaluating the progress and the development of the country. In this regard, by measuring the scientific production, it is possible to present a picture of the scientific activities of a country [2]. One of the criteria for measuring the scientific production of each country is the number of published articles indexed in the authoritative databases [3]. Therefore, this study aims to examine the scientific publications of scholars in the field of psychology and identify the most important research and academic centers and the most important scholars.

Methods
This is a scientometrics study using the bibliometric and visualization methods that was conducted on all papers in psychology published until the end of 2022 and indexed in the Scopus database. In this regard, a search was conducted in the Scopus database using MesH terms. The search strategy was as follows: TITLE-ABS-KEY (psychology) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (psychology). All information was extracted in CSV file in Excel and related maps and tables were prepared using VOSviewer software. Data analysis was done using Citation analysis, Co-authorship analysis, Co-occurrence analysis and Co-citation analysis.

Results
A total of 26,194 papers has been published and indexed in Scopus related to the subject of psychology. The average citation per paper was 2.40 and the average h-index of the retrieved papers was 12. According to the obtained information, it can be seen that the number of papers in this field has a growing trend, and top scholars and institutions in the world are evaluating the psychological issues. According to the obtained information, it can be seen that the information related to this issue has a growing trend. Information is spreading internationally in the world and top researchers and institutions in the world are investigating, researching and evaluating this issue. Most of the papers were original articles published in English, and most of the articles were published by international scholars in the American Psychologist journal (n=204). The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) was the most productive organization (n=1186) and Deleon and Kaslow were the most prolific authors with 29 papers. The most co-authorships were with scholars from the United States. The subject of psychology had the largest number of published papers.

Conclusion
The results of the study showed that at the international level, the number of published papers and citations of articles related to psychology is growing. The results of this study can be useful for scholars and experts in the field of psychology. In this study, altmetrics indicators were not investigated, which is one of the limitations of this study. Further related studies are recommended by measuring the altmetrics indicators of top authors or the articles.

Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
This study was approved by the Islamic Azad University, Malayer Barnch (Code: 21480).

Funding
This study was supported by the Islamic Azad University, Malayer Barnch.

Authors' contributions
Data gathering: Azardokht Giti and Davod Jafari;  Data analysis: Davod Jafar; Article preparation: Davod Jafari Mohsen Bahrami.

Conflicts of interest
The authors declared no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Marzieh Golchin for her cooperation in extracting information from the Scopus database.



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