Scientific Productivity of Zahedan University of Medical Sciences

Background : Nowadays the scientific research outputs indexed in international databases are used in the bibliometric rankings of researchers, departments and universities. Measuring the impact and value of scientific publications is used by policy makers to distribute the research funds in way that support high quality research projects.
Materials and Methods : In this scientometric study, SCOPUS citation database was used to evaluate the scientific research productivity of Zahedan University of Medical Sciences (ZAUMS) over the period of 1976-2011. We retrieved the number of publications and citations of researchers, academic groups, and university and calculated their h-index scores. The affiliation varieties were used by researchers to address the university and different spellings of authors names were determind.
Results : The results showed that scientific productivity of ZAUMS has been improved so that it’s h-index increased from 1 in 2000 to 19 over the period of the study.
Conclusion : Total number of 504 publications were indexed in SCOPUS in the forms of original article, review article, conference paper, letter, editorial, and note. Most of the publications were in the form of research article (91.2%). There was a significant coorelation between the number of publications, citation rates and h-index scores. Departments of biochemistry and infectious disease ranked first on the basis of producing the most scientific output of the university.