A study on distribution of the published researches on different subjects of medicine among Iranian medical journals (2009)

  Background: Scientific development is attained by paying attention to all dimensions and branches of knowledge in each society. Researchers, through accessing the new areas of the sciences will become aware of the latest scientific findings and by implementation of such information in their own specific field can improve their professional skills and also guided into new research subjects.   Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the distribution of the published medical researches on different subjects of medicine among Iranian medical journals.   Methods: This research was conducted by Content analysis in 2009. The latest issues of 108 published medical journals of Medical Universities of Iran, indexed by the Scientific Information Database (SID), were assessed and coded. Coding the subjects of articles was based on the comparative method and that of subject categorization performed according to the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH).   Findings: Of total 990 investigated articles based on MeSH categorization, almost 34% (335) articles were related to clinical subjects among those 13% associated with female urogenital diseases and pregnancy complications, 9% with skin and connective tissue diseases, and 8% with diseases of digestive system with no reference to the fields of animal and stomatognathic diseases.   Conclusion: According to our data, there is an asymmetric distribution of researches in different fields of the medical subjects. Shortage of attention to different subjects eventually leads to instability in the sustained development of the country and scientific growth in all medical subjects.