W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES? T HE ISC S EMINAR T EHRAN, I RAN OCTOBER 25 th. – NOVEMBER 1 st Presenter : Prof. Dr. Jafar Mehrad President of the Islamic Science Citation Center (ISC)

T he fuel of the Metrics Studies is the information available in printed sources like journals, dissertations and books as well as electronic sources like the web and databases. In this regard, information and communication technologies play an important role in the production, dissemination, transference, and use of knowledge. Part of the studies which have been done on information and knowledge pertains to access to information. W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? INTRODUCTION C ountries are divided into binary categories in respect of science production and consumption: North and South, Advanced and Third World countries, Advanced and Developing countries, Advanced and Less-developed countries, Developed and Developing countries.

I naccessibility to information, impedes information growth in the developing countries. At the same time, studies conducted in these countries have been ignored for several reasons such as triviality, inability to answer national questions and issues that can be translated to be published in the international journals for the scientific society to cite them. This has led to an unbalanced picture of the world science production. W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? INTRODUCTION S cience can solve all the problems related to poverty, starvation, illiteracy, poor sanitation, backwardness, etc. Today, no one can ignore the role of science in the world. Attracting the scientific and technical information is a crucial prerequisite for the growth of the developing countries.

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? INTRODUCTION T he ability to resolve these issues and the ultimate progress involve gaining access to the up-to-date and authentic information. The traditional way of gaining access to research information involves paying for the subscription expenses. This has a negative effect on the developing countries. The scientific foundation of the developing countries could be enhanced only by gaining access to research information on a global scale. T he economic development of a country depends on its scientific potentialities and ability to solve problems of different fields such as social welfare, infectious diseases, environment management or industrial growth.

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? INTRODUCTION Articles which are written without having access to the necessary information of their study field are probably not accepted for publication in top peer reviewed journals. The researcher who does not have access to up-to-date and authentic research information probably has to solve problems which have been already solved I n this regard, on the research level, articles in the scientific journals are the most important kind of documents for the expansion of scientific information. Scientific journals are extremely used and their importance and their use have been increasing more than ever. A t present, gaining access to information is impossible for the scientific institutions and universities of many developing countries because of the high costs of journals dollars per annum

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? Serials Crisis As a Result Personal subscription of the journals by the scientists has decreased in the last 2-3 decades. Libraries’ inability to subscribe the core journals has had an adverse effect on university and higher education institutions in the developing countries. “Serials Crisis” Even in the USA Because of the high cost of journals, even scientists in the advanced countries like the United States of America are relying on their libraries more than ever to access information. Ideally Science and knowledge must be developed everywhere without limitation. However Science production has in practice been concentrated in some developed countries. The vast majority of the Third World countries produce a little portion of the world science production which is in part due to the unavailability of suitable sources, researchers and scientists.

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? Unbalanced Scientific Output Most of the modern knowledge is produced in the advanced countries which extraordinarily invest in technical and scientific fields. Eight countries including the Unites States of America, England, Germany and Japan produce over 85 percent of the highly-cited documents while the other 163 developing countries produce just 2.5 percent of such documents. Science in the less developed countries is identified with weak substructures, insufficient financial support, small number of scientists Fact Leads to countries have a little share of the world science production. Another instance of the unbalance in the scientific output of the world countries is the social welfare and medical research. only 10 percent of research in these disciplines and 2 percent of 3000 journals indexed in MEDLINE are produced in the developing countries.

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? Journals Ranking Therefore A considerable attention has been paid to ranking journals and indices which do this task. That could be effective in the growth of one country and its subsystems. Ranking scientific journals allows managers of higher education institutions to take notice of the growth of faculty members in their institutions. Scientific journals have an important role in the intellectual life of the members of the scientific society. According to the ISI standard, a person is considered as a scientist or intellectual who shares a range of ISI references. According to this definition, there are nearly 6550 scientists in the world of whom one is in Iran, one in Pakistan, one in Turkey and one in Algeria. In other words, the 57 Islamic countries have 4 scientists of the scientists—according to the above definition—are in the United States of America and the rest of them are in the other parts of the world.

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? Unbalanced Scientific Output Advanced Countries total investment on the scientific research in UNESCO Statistics in 2007 Advanced Countries production of the whole publications indexed in the Science Citation Index in 2006.

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? Competition Some of the 3 rd. World countries have improved their scientific status in the world society including: Brazil South Korea India China ISI statistics show that the three main research branches in Iran which are recorded in the journals indexed in ISI are: Organic Chemistry Analytical Chemistry Interdisciplinary Chemistry

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? Low Impact Factor The Cause The peer reviewing principles and criteria are basically problematic. The developing countries’ problem regarding science production is not just the small amount of science production or that it is disproportionate to the countries’ local needs. The low impact of the researches on different sciences of the world is another problem. The Low Impact Factor The Fact Many articles of the developing countries’ researchers are published in journals with low IF. Not considering a few exceptions In most cases their articles are ignored by their colleagues in the advanced countries because they think that their articles are not so informative. Rarely the researchers of the advanced countries cite researchers of the developing countries. On the contrary, researchers of the developing countries mostly cite the scientists of the advanced countries.

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? Conclusion Importance of scientific information Necessity of owning scientific journals Implementing a system for gaining access to scientific journals Outlines The main problem Inaccessibility to the Islamic countries’ scientific journals The Islamic World Science Citation Center has now managed to accomplish this task. Since 2005 we have succeeded to prepare 730 Arabic journals 421 English journals

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? English Journals

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? List of the Islamic Countries Research Journals

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? Arabic Journals

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? List of the Islamic Countries Research Journals

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? Miscellaneous Journals

W HY M ETRICS S TUDIES ? List of the Islamic Countries Research Journals