Digital Library in Web of Science: Analyzing World Scientific Papers Emphasizing Iran\'s rank

Background and aim: Digital libraries have been attracted by many countries around the world in recent years, and many scientific outputs regarding to digital libraries have been published. The aim of this study was to analyze the scientific papers of the world in the field of digital libraries based on quantitative and qualitative indicators with focus on Iran's rank. Material and methods: This descriptive-analytical study with a scientometric approach was evaluated 5637 papers indexed in Web of Science (WoS) by the end of 2016. The HistCite software was used for data analysis and VOSviewer software was applied for drawing the maps related to thematic and co-authorship analysis. Findings: The result indicates that the scientific papers of the world have had an increasing trend in this field. H-index of articles was 93 and 18 in the world and Middle East countries, respectively. The United States of America (USA) had the highest number of articles (2221) with h-index 81. Iran had h-index 7. It was found that single-authored paper had the highest frequency among global papers. Scientific collaborative coefficient was 0.44 and 0.54 for global and Iranian researchers during 35 years, respectively. Conclusion: The research results suggest that most scientific articles of digital libraries have been published by several countries, with the USA topping the list. In the Middle East, Iran has the largest share in science production with 41 articles.