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The study aimed to determine the perceptions and views of Iranian editors about the quality of journals, articles, the responsibilities of the editorial team, review and the review process, copyright and intellectual property, consequences of open access (OA), and influential factors in the scientific life cycle of a journal. The study adopted a qualitative approach using interviews. Respondents included 13 editors of journals. Purposive and snowball sampling methods were used for the interview. The results showed that the editor's main tasks were to supervise the reviewers' performance, initially control the article, and send it to the reviewers. Participants believed that compliance with professional standards was the main factor influencing the scientific quality of publications. Their understanding of the ethical codes includes impartiality and confidentiality in evaluation and publication. In light of the fact that reviewers often perform superficial reviews, the editors viewed them as poor-quality. They stated that intellectual property is not valued and observed in many cases. Some participants mentioned the negative consequences of open access (OA). However, they think OA bears more positive than adverse outcomes. Observance of these factors is ultimately essential for the survival of a scientific journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers at medical universities are highly active in scientific collaborations at the national, regional, and international levels. Iranian Medical researchers pay diligent attention to scientific collaborations at all levels. The present study aimed to investigate various dimensions of scientific collaborations of the researchers at Shiraz University of Medical Sciences (SUMS). The dimensions include the patterns and levels of national and international collaborations, interdisciplinary interactions, the relationship between geographical distance and scientific collaboration, and the interdisciplinarity pattern of international collaborations. The study adopted a descriptive-analytical method. The data were collected using scientometric measures. The research population consisted of 4499 journal articles in Web of Science (WoS) authored by SUMS researchers during 2014-2018. The VOSviewer was applied to analyze the data and visualize the networks. The results revealed that national collaboration was the dominant pattern. The results showed a desirable ratio of scientific collaborations to all publications (52%). The authors mostly tended to collaborate with American researchers. The majority of interdisciplinary collaborations were observed in the microbiology field. The results suggested that geographical distance did not affect scientific collaborations at the national and international levels (P>0.05). At the international level, SUMS researchers had the highest collaboration with the University of Manitoba and Tehran University at the national level. The results suggested that research policymakers at SUMS should prioritize research policies toward scientific collaborations at all levels and fields to share and synergize knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate the subject of "public libraries" in the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science (WoS) and Islamic World Science Citation Center (ISC). The present study is a descriptive-analytical research adopting scientometrics approach in terms of data collection. The statistical population of the study consisted of 3122 documents indexed in the WoS during 1900-2019 as well as 232 documents indexed in the ISC during 1999-2017. To collect data, we refined the search to title as (TI=Public Library*) and limited it to the time span (PY=1900- 2019) in WoS in order to avoid diversity in the retrieved documents. The same approach was followed to retrieve documents from ISC databases. Research findings showed that foreign researchers were interested in "information science and library", "computer sciences", and "architecture" in relation to public library studies. On the other hand, Iranian researchers focused on "public library studies", "assessment", and "staff studies including managers and librarians". Considering the journals publishing research on public library issues, the findings showed that the American Library Journal (n=749) and the Iranian Research on Information Science and public libraries (n=134) published the largest number of articles on the subject at the global and local levels, respectively. USA, Canada, and England were the most productive countries in "public libraries" research area. Besides, University of Illinois and Islamic Azad University were the most active institutions publishing in this field at international and national levels with 62 and 57 documents, respectively. This study aimed to survey and compare research on public libraries in WoS and ISC. An examination of the subject area of public libraries revealed the trends of research fronts at the global level and in Iran and determines whether or not the topics of interest to world-class researchers are close to that of national researchers or if domestic researchers have addressed public library issues with an indigenous approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Pneumothorax is a potential life-threatening condition especially in patients with underlying disorders. In this study we compared the diagnostic accuracy of general practitioners and emergency medicine specialists in interpreting chest x-rays (CXR) suspected of having iatrogenic pneumothorax in emergency departments. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in Shahid Chamran Hospital in Tehran, Iran during 2008- 2010. The study was designed to compare the ability of general practitioners and emergency medicine specialists in diagnosing iatrogenic pneumothorax regarding 500 CXRs of one-hundred patients admitted for upper central venous catheterization. Results: General practitioners and emergency medicine specialists could accurately (P<0.001) diagnose pneumothorax in 484 (96.8%) and 497 (99.4%) CXRs, respectively. None of the underlying causes of the condition affected the diagnostic accuracy of both physician groups (P>0.05). Conclusion: These findings indicate that the diagnostic accuracy of emergency medicine specialists is significantly higher than those of general physicians. The diagnostic accuracy of both physician groups was higher than the values in similar studies that signifies the role of relevant training given in the emergency departments of the Hospital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The references cited in scientific articles are as important as any other part of the paper, because of their usefulness to the scientific community and to abstracting and indexing services and citation databases. I studied inaccuracies in references and in-text citations in sample of 97 of the 519 peer-reviewed journals accredited by the Iranian National Commission for Journal Accreditation Policy (Ministry of Research, Science and Technology). The target journals published 2,980 articles with 74,577 cited references and 108,151 in-text citations. The results showed 36.6% as the average percentage error rate (range 5.6% to 61.3%). The mean number of errors in cited reference and in-text citations was 2.7 per article, and the mean number of errors per journal was 690. For the entire sample of articles, 4,369 in-text citations did not match any source in the list of references (4%), and 8,683 cited references did not match any in-text citation (11.6%). The stakeholders in scholarly communication, especially authors, pay insufficient attention to the accuracy of bibliographic references. Peer-reviewed journals should encourage the use of standardized journal policies and quality-control measures regarding peer review, data quality and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]