investigation of science production in iran’s type i universities of medical sciences, a 6-year assessment

Introduction: science production is one of the main dimensions of sustainable development in any country. thus, universities as themajor centers for science production play a key role in development. the present study aimed to assess the trend of science productionin iran’s type i universities of medical sciences from 2007 to 2012.method: in this study, the universities’ scores of empowering, governance and leadership, science production, student researches, andnumber of published articles were computed based on the evaluations of universities of medical sciences by the ministry of health,treatment, and medical education from 2007 to 2012. then, the data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the figures weredrawn by excel software.results: this study assessed science production in iran’s type i universities of medical sciences and analyzed each university’s proportionin publication of articles. according to the results, most of the published articles were affiliated to tehran university of medical sciences.however, considering the role of number of faculty members, different results were obtained. with respect to the evaluation raw scores,isfahan university of medical sciences showed a considerable reduction of scores in 2012, while other universities had a constant orascending trend. besides, indexed articles followed an ascending trend in all the universities and most of the articles had been publishedin index 1.conclusion: similar to other studies, the findings of this study revealed an increase in science productions in iran through the recentyears. yet, the highest scores of the studied indexes, except for student researches, were related to tehran university of medical sciences.this great difference between this university and other universities might be due to accumulation of specific potentials and forces inthis region. overall, science productions followed an ascending trend in all type i universities of medical sciences. yet, more attemptsshould be made to publish high-quality articles in reliable international journals. thus, managers and policymakers are recommendedto provide the ground for improvement and empowerment of knowledge and science production, development of leadership andgovernance capacity, empowerment of researchers, and provision of financial and infrastructure supports for development offundamental, basic, clinical, and applied researches which can be presented at the international level.