ANALYSIS AND VISUALIZATION OF SCIENTIFIC COLLABORATION OF IRAN UNIVERSITIES OF MEDICAL SCIENCES USING SOCIAL NETWORK ANALYSIS METRICS BASED ON WEB OF SCIENCE DATABASE

Background and Aim: Research in the medical field requires large budgets, specialist human resources and modern equipment and instruments. Scientific collaboration is a way to overcome such problems. Main goal of this study was analyzing scientific collaboration of universities of medical sciences in different aspects. Materials and Methods: In this research, by using scientometrics methods and social network analysis techniques, the Universities of Medical Sciences co-authorship network was mapped. Source of collecting Data, was Web Of Science database. For mapping and analyzing of scientific networks, we used Bibexcel, VOSviewer, Pajek and UCINET software. Results: Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Tehran University of Medical Sciences, with 933 co-authorship papers are in the first place in scientific collaboration among Iranian Universities of Medical Sciences. And at the international level, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences has more scientific collaboration than other Iranian universities with the University of Malaya. Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences and Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, have significant position in terms of centrality index in co-authorship network. Conclusion: Medical sciences researchers have very strong tendency to make scientific collaboration with Tehran University of Medical Sciences researchers. For this reason, scientific collaboration network has become a monopoly network around Tehran University of Medical Sciences. This form of collaboration prevents creation of opportunities for collaboration.