scientific productivity, impact and collaboration of the top asian countries in scopus during...

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Scientific Productivity, Impact andCollaboration of the Top Asian Countriesin Scopus During 1996-2010Mohammadamin Erfanmanesh a , Reza Basirian Jahromi b , ElaheHosseini c & Zohreh Gholamhosseinzadeh da Faculty of Computer Science & IT , University of Malaya , KualaLumpur , Malaysiab Shahid Chamran University of Ahwaz , Ahwaz , Iranc Alzahra University , Tehran , Irand Research Institute of Petroleum Industry , Tehran , IranPublished online: 16 Aug 2013.

To cite this article: Mohammadamin Erfanmanesh , Reza Basirian Jahromi , Elahe Hosseini &Zohreh Gholamhosseinzadeh (2013) Scientific Productivity, Impact and Collaboration of the TopAsian Countries in Scopus During 1996-2010, Collnet Journal of Scientometrics and InformationManagement, 7:1, 97-110, DOI: 10.1080/09737766.2013.802632

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97 COLLNET JOURNAL OF SCIENTOMETRICS AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT 7(1) JUNE 2013

Mohammadamin ErfanmaneshFaculty of Computer Science & ITUniversity of MalayaKuala LumpurMalaysia

[email protected]

Reza Basirian JahromiShahid Chamran University of AhwazAhwazIran

[email protected]

Elahe HosseiniAlzahra UniversityTehranIran

[email protected]

Zohreh GholamhosseinzadehResearch Institute of Petroleum IndustryTehranIran

[email protected]

Scientifi c Productivity, Impact and Collaboration of the Top Asian Countries in Scopus During 1996-2010

Mohammadamin ErfanmaneshReza Basirian Jahromi

Elahe HosseiniZohreh Gholamhosseinzadeh

The current research aims to investigate scientifi c productivity and collaboration of the top 10 productive Asian countries in Scopus da-tabase from 1996 to 2010 via scientometric approach. Those documents specifi ed one of the 10 Asian counties (China, Japan, India, South Ko-rea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Iran, Thailand and Malaysia) as their aff iliated country, published during 1996-2010 and indexed in Sco-pus database, were selected as the sample of the study. The results of the study revealed that China has the highest number of publications among 10 top Asian countries. Over the period under consideration, 1124627 publications of Chinese researchers were indexed in Scopus. After China, Japan has the 2nd rank in scientifi c productivity among Asian countries which placed this country as the 4th rank worldwide in Scopus after USA, England, and China. Reults showed that Hong Kong clearly has the highest rate of cited publications, followed by Japan and singapore. Additionally, the most central and prolifi c countries in the collaboration network of the top Asian countries in terms of degree cen-trality are China, Japan and Hong Kong.

Keywords: Scientifi c productivity, impact, collaboration, Asian countries, Scopus.

©

Originally presented at the 8th International Conference on Webomet-

rics, Informetrics and Scientometrics (WIS) and 13th COLLNET Meeting

October 23–26, 2012, KISTI, Seoul, South Korea.

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COLLNET JOURNAL OF SCIENTOMETRICS AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT 7(1) JUNE 201398

Scientifi c Productivity, Impact and Collaboration of the Top Asian Countries

1. Introduction

In modern age, policy-making has become as one of the most important elements of

programming and developing among countries in science and technology. Diff erent coun-

tries try to improve their role in political and economical interactions via increasing their

share in scientifi c productions. In recent years, some Asian countries have improved their

scientifi c positions through recognizing their capabilities and eff icient policy-making;

thus, they have located in an outstanding position among advanced scientifi c countries.

For example, in one hand, the rank of China and Japan among 5 top countries in science

and technology in Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases and, on the other hand, the

presence of some universities from Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, and China among top

100 universities worldwide. This research aims to determine and study the top productive

Asian countries in Scopus database. Additionally, it investigate the scientifi c collaboration

network of these countries using degree centrality measure. Since Iran has been located

among top Asian countries, we can explore its scientifi c output compare to other important

Asian countries. Our research focuses on Scopus database, which is considered as the sec-

ond citation database in the world after Thomson Reuters Web of Knowledge. The review

of the literature shows that the majority of past studies have been focused on WoS; so Sco-

pus has been studied less extensively. Moreover, although there are a quite lot of related

papers dealing with China, Japan and India, but other productive Asian countries have

not been investigated suff iciently. As a result, the present study mainly aims to investigate

scientifi c productivity, impact and collaboration of the top 10 Asian countries in Scopus

database during 1996 to 2010. Specifi c objectives of the study are to:

• Determine the frequency of publications, citations and self citations of the top

Asian Countries in Scopus;

• Determine the global publication and citation shares of the top Asian countries in

Scopus;

• Determine the percentage of cited and uncited publications of the top Asian coun-

tries in Scopus;

• Determine the high productivity areas of reserach of the top Asian countries;

• Determine the most productive universities of the top Asian countries;

• Determine the rate of international collaborations of the top Asian countries;

• Determine the scientifi c collaborations of the top Asian countries with each other; and

• Visualize the collaboration network of the top Asian countries.

2. Review of the Literature

As discussed earlier, the purpose of this study is to investigate scientifi c productiv-

ity, impact and collaboration of the top Asian countires in Scopus. A review of the lit-

erature was conducted to investigate and summarize previous related studies. To date,

diff erent studies have addressed the scientifi c productivity and impact of specifi c Asian

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COLLNET JOURNAL OF SCIENTOMETRICS AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT 7(1) JUNE 2013 99

M. Erfanmanesh, R. B. Jahromi, E. Hosseini and Z. Gholamhosseinzadeh

countries, like China (Fu et al., [8]; Kharbanda [17]; Leydesdorff [20]; Moed [25]), Japan

(Okubo & Yamashita [28]; Gonda & Kakizaki [11]; Yamazaki [33]), India (Gupta & Dhawan

[14]; Patra & Chand [30]; Garg & Padhi [10]), Taiwan (Miyayri & Chang [24]; Huang, Chang

& Chen [15]) and Singapore (Wong & Ho [32]; Arunachalam & Garg [3]). Moreover, some

other studies have investigated scientifi c output and impact of reserachers in Iran (Osareh

& Wilson [29]; Moin, Mahmoudi & Rezai [26], Erfanmanesh & Didehgah [7]), Malaysia

(Yazit & Zainab [34]; Abrizah & Wee [1]), South Korea (Choung, Min & Park [5]; Kim [18]),

Thailand (Yuthavong [35]) and Hong Kong (Chen et al., [4]).

Reserach collaboration between top Asian countries in various reserach areas was also

investigated by some previous researchers. In one of these studies, Arunachalam and Doss

[2] studied international scientifi c collaborations in science among 11 Asian countries us-

ing data from WoS. The results showed that China and South Korea had the highest rate of

international collaboration. Additionally, India, China and South Korea have collaborated

more in Physics, whereas the other eight countries have collaborated more in Life Sciences.

In almost all fi elds and for virtually all Asian countries, USA was the most preferred col-

laborating partner. Gupta and Dhawan [13] studied scientifi c collaboration between India

and China in science and technology during 1994-1999. The fi ndings revealed that Physics

and Clinical Medicine were the priority areas of collaboration between India and China. It

had also been found that 86 Indian and 114 Chinese institutions were involved in collabo-

ration between countries. Didegah and Erfanmanesh [6] studied scientifi c collaboration

between Iran and ASEAN countries. The result of the study showed that Iran had scientifi c

collaboration with eight ASEAN countires during past 34 years, which Malaysia was the

most preff ered collaborating partener of Iran. Iran-ASEAN countries collaborations were

increasing over the examined years. Additionally, there had been a statistically signifi cant

positive relationship between scientifi c output of ASEAN countries and number of their

collaborative publications with Iran. In another study, Mahbuba and Rousseau [23] studied

scientifi c productivity and collaboration of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in

both Scopus and WoS. Results of the study showed that India’s number of publication was

about 30 times higher than Pakistan’s, which was almost double that of Bangladesh. Sri

Lanka’s number of publications was about 60% of Bangladesh. Sri Lanka and Pakistan had

the lowest and largest rate of uncited articles, respectively.

Some other studies compared scientifi c output of the Asian countries. In one of these

studies, Kumar and Garg [19] compared 2058 papers published by Chinese researchers

and 2678 papers published by Indian authors in the research fi eld of Computer Science

during 1971-2000. Results showed that Chinese researchers prefer to publish their papers

in domestic journals, while Indian researchers prefer to publish in western countries jour-

nals. Another comparison between China and India was made by Garg [9] in the area of

laser research. Result of the study revealed that the impact made by Indian papers was

more than for Chienese papers, as refl ected by normalized impact per paper, proportion

of papers in high quality journals and publication eff ective index. In another study, Guan

and Ma [12] compared the scientifi c research in the semiconductor-related fi eld in China

during 1995-2004 with some other major nations in Asia. It is revealed that like most of

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other Asian countries, the research results of Chinese scientists in semiconductor have

a low international visibility despite their strong research eff orts and increasingly large

domestic readership. Li et al., [22] compared performance of reserach universities in main-

land China, Taiwan and Hong Kong using both quality and quantity measures. The results

showed that the mainland universities were generally of higher research production and

lower research quality than Hong Kong and Taiwan universities.

Overall, although a few previous studies have attempted to compare scientifi c produc-

tivity, impact and collaboration of the Asian countries, these studies were limited in their

sample size, time span and targeted countries. Therefore, intensive and comprehensive

studies are required to understand the function of these countries in science and technol-

ogy. This study investigate scientifi c productivity, impact and collaboration of the top 10

Asian countries in Scopus database during 1996-2010.

3. Research Methodology

This study uses Scopus database to extract relevant publications data on the top 10

Asian countries for the 15 year period (1996-2010). Scopus is an international multidisci-

plinary database indexing over 19500 international peer reviewed journals in science and

technology, besides 400 trade publications and 360 book series (until November 2012).

For extracting data from Scopus, a number of searches were conducted at the same time.

Those documents specifi ed at least one of the top Asian countries (China, Japan, Hong

Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Iran, Thailand, Malaysia and India) as their aff ili-

ated country and published during 1996-2010, were selected as the sample of the study.

By searching name of country in Scopus and refi ning the results to the determined pe-

riod of time, some fi elds were investigated to gain accurate results. Data were analyzed by

descriptive statistics using Microsoft Excel software. UCINet software was utilized for

visualization of the collaboration network of countries.

4. Findings4.1. Number of publications, citations and self-citations of the top Asian countries in Scopus

Results of the study revealed that China has the highest number of publications among

studied countries. Chinese researchers have published 1848727 papers during 1996-2010.

Additionally, according to the number of citations received, Hong Kong (1464726) is the

best performing country followed by Japan (16452234) and Singapore (1092233). On com-

paring citation impact per paper among top 10 countries, it was observed that Hong Kong

tops the list with cpp of 11.29, followed by Japan (11.24) and Singapore (9.99). Moreover,

the highest average of self-citations belongs to Japanese researchers (3.13 self-citations

per document). Iran has the 7th rank in scientifi c productivity and the 8th rank in cita-

tions. Iranian researcher’s publications have received 4.14 citations per paper in average

(Table 1). The publication distribution of the top Asian countries in Scopus during 1996-

2010 is shown in Figure 1.

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4.2. Global publication and citation shares of the top Asian countries

According to the results of the study, 21.64% of the total publications and 15.58% of the

total citations of the Scopus databse belong to the top 10 Asian countries. The publications

share of these countries during the examined years ranges from 0.23% (Malaysia) to 7.92%

(China). Additionally, the global publications and citations share of all Asian countries

in Scopus is 24% and 18%, respectively. Over the period 1996-2010, the highest shares of

Table 1Number of publications, citations and self citations of the top Asian countries in Scopus

Citations per Self-citations perCountry Publications Citations Publication Self-Citations Publication

China 1848727 7396935 4 3937424 2.13

Japan 1464273 16452234 11.24 4593600 3.13

India 533006 3211864 6.03 1102880 2.06

S. Korea 430438 3344131 7.77 769396 1.78

Taiwan 308498 2391691 7.75 595815 1.93

Hong Kong 129792 1464726 11.29 232781 1.79

Iran 120350 499322 4.14 204982 1.7

Singapore 109346 1092233 9.99 159314 1.45

Thailand 59332 442250 7.45 79112 1.33

Malaysia 55211 218280 3.95 49855 0.9

Figure 1Publication distribution of the top Asian countries during 1996-2010D

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publications and citations in the world belong to Western European countries (28.7%) and

North American countries (48%), respectively. Results of the study revealed that Japan

ranks 1st among the top 10 Asian countries with its global citation share of 7.04%, followed

by China (3.16%) and South Korea (1.43%). Additionally, 0.51% of the global publications

and 0.21% of the total citations in Scopus database belong to Iranian researchers (Table 2).

4.3. Percentage of cited and uncited publications of the top Asian countries in Scopus

Results of the study showed that Hong Kong clearly has the highest rate of cited pub-

lications (75.58%), followed by Japan (73.55%) and singapore (72.25%). As shown in table

3, china is the worst performing country with 50.78% of cited publications. Additionally,

57.19% out of the total Iranian publications in Scopus are cited which place this country in

8th place (Table 3).

4.4. High productivity areas of reserach of the top Asian countries

The number of Asian countries’ publications was also investigated in diff erent subject

areas. Results of the study revealed that medicine is the most productive subject area of

reserach in Japan, India and Thaniland, while in other seven coutries, engineering is the

high priority area of reserach (Table 4). The highest number of Iranian publications after

engineering belong to medicine, chemistry and agriculture. Conversely, economics is the

least productive fi eld of research in Iran.

4.5. Most productive universities of the top Asian countries

Results of the study showed that the National University of Singapore has the highest

share in scholarly productivity among top 10 Asian countries universities’. The researchers

Table 2Top 10 Asian countries’ share in total publications and citations in Scopus

Percentage of Publications Percentage ofCountry in Scopus Citations in Scopus

China 7.92 3.16

Japan 6.28 7.04

India 2.28 1.37

S. Korea 1.84 1.43

Taiwan 1.32 1.02

Hong Kong 0.55 0.62

Iran 0.51 0.21

Singapore 0.46 0.46

Thailand 0.25 0.18

Malaysia 0.23 0.09

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of this university have published 47790 papers which account for 43.7 % share of the total

research output of Singapore during 1996-2010. Additionally, the University of Hong Kong

and the Mahidol University are the most productive universities in Hong Kong and Thai-

land which have individually contributed 22.81% and 19.4% share of the total research our-

put of these countries. Moreover, the Tehran University is the most productive university

in Iran, followed by the Sharif University of Technology and the Islamic Azad University.

Table 6 shows the most productive university in each of the top Asian countries (Table 5).

Table 3Percentage of cited publications of the top Asian countries in Scopus

Percentage of CitedCountry Number of Cited Articles Articles

Hong Kong 98106 75.58

Japan 1077097 73.55

Singapore 79004 72.25

Taiwan 213761 69.29

Thailand 40725 68.63

S. Korea 292306 67.59

India 343525 64.45

Iran 68838 57.19

Malaysia 28689 51.96

China 938871 50.78

Table 4Most productive fi elds of the top Asian countries

High Productivity Number of Percentage ofCountry Area Publications Publications

Singapore Engineering 41001 37.49

China Engineering 624281 33.77

Thailand Medicine 18336 30.9

Taiwan Engineering 127842 41.44

Hong Kong Engineering 37206 28.66

S. Korea Engineering 116880 27.15

Japan Medicine 368910 25.19

Malaysia Engineering 13848 25.08

Iran Engineering 29311 24.35

India Medicine 101747 19.08

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4.6. International collaborative share of the top Asian countries

As shown in table 6 below, Hong Kong has the highets international collaborative share

with 47.77% of the total research output of this country. Additionally, Thanland and Sin-

gapore shares of international collaborative papers during the period under study were

44.87% and 38.26%, respectively. Moreover, only 16.57% of Chinese researchers’ output has

been produced through colabboration with researchers from other countries. Also, based

on the publication data, the total international collaborative papers of Iran consist of 29521,

Table 5Most productive universities of the top Asian countries

Number of Percentage ofCountry The Most productive University Publications Publications

Singapore National University of Singapore 47790 43.7

Hong Kong The University of Hong Kong 29609 22.81

Thailand Mahidol University 11511 19.4

Malaysia University of Malaya 9388 17

Taiwan National Taiwan University 52600 17.05

Iran Tehran University 13565 11.27

S. Korea Seoul National University 50621 11.76

Japan University of Tokyo 98001 6.69

China Tsinghua University 76699 4.14

India Indian Institute of Science 17045 3.19

Table 6International collaborative share of the top Asian countries

Percentage of International Country Collaboration

Hong Kong 47.77

Thailand 44.87

Singapore 38.26

Malaysia 37.87

S. Korea 25.53

Iran 24.53

Japan 21.4

Taiwan 19.19

India 18.1

China 16.57

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which accounts for 24.52% share in the comulative output of Iran in Scopus during 1996-

2010 (Table 6).

4.7. Scientifi c collaborations of the top Asian countries with each other

Table 7 shows the international collaborative linkage of each of the Asian top countries

with others. As can be seen, China is the most important collaborator of Japan, Taiwan,

Hong Kong and Singapore. Additionally, India, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Iran

have the highest number of collaborative linkage with Japan (Table 7).

Table 7Scientifi c collaborations of top Asian countries with each other

Japan China India Korea Taiwan H.Kong Singapore Iran Thailand Malaysia

Japan - 35959 8013 18421 6031 2056 2448 999 5538 1991

China 35959 - 3252 10524 7258 35073 10689 499 1089 1519

India 8013 3252 - 4839 2505 745 1616 743 655 2051

Korea 18421 10524 4839 - 2538 833 1122 314 613 461

Taiwan 6031 7258 2505 2538 - 2107 1749 325 676 459

H.Kong 2056 35073 745 833 2107 - 2586 58 427 283

Singapore 2448 10689 1616 1122 1749 2586 - 129 495 1040

Iran 999 499 743 314 325 58 129 - 67 886

Thailand 5538 1089 655 613 676 427 495 67 - 855

Malaysia 1991 1519 2051 461 459 283 1040 886 855 -

Figure 2The collaboration network of the top 10 Asian countries

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The collaboration network of the top 10 Asian countries was visualized using the

UCINet software. The co-authorship network of countries consists of vertices and links:

vertices represent countries, while links connect vertices in the form of co-authorships.

There is a link between two vertices if they have co-authored at least one paper. The size

of the total network denotes simply by the number of unique actors or vertices (10) with

365072 co-authorship links. The strongest partnerships in the network exist between China

and Japan with the total of 35959 co-authorship. In Social Network Analysis (SNA), degree

centrality of a vertex is the total number of links that are adjacent to this vertex (Newman

[27]). In this study, it refers to the total number of co-authorships that a country has. Coun-

tries with higher degree centrality are more central to the structure of the network and tend

to have greater capacity to infl uence others. The average degree centrality of countries in

this network is 36507 (SD=31445), while the degree distribution varies signifi cantly. The

most prolifi c and collaborative countries in terms of degree centrality are: China (105862),

Japan (81456) and Hong Kong (44168) (Table 8).

5. Conclusion

This research aimes to investigate scientifi c productivity, impact and collaborations

of the top Asian countries in Scopus database. Results of the study revealed that China

was the most productive country in Asia with 1848727 publications. Additionally, 7.92%

of the total publications of the Scopus database belong to Chinese researchers which place

this country in the second rank after United States. An earlier studies by Leydesdorff and

Wagner [21] and Zhou, Thijs and Glanzel [36] also has ranked China in second position in

terms of scientifi c publications. After China, Japan and India rank at second and third po-

sitions in Asia and fourth and tenth positions worlwide with global publication shares of

6.26% and 2.28%, respectively. This fi nding is somewhat consistent with that of Gupta and

Table 8Degree centrality of the top Asian countries in collaboration

network of countries

Country Degree Centrality

China 105862

Japan 81456

Hong Kong 44168

S. Korea 39665

India 24419

Taiwan 23648

Singapore 21874

Thailand 10415

Malaysia 9545

Iran 4020

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Dhawan [14] who found that India ranks 12th among the top 20 countries in science and

technology, with its global publications share of 2.04% computed on cumulative publica-

tions output in Scopus during the period 1996–2006. Results of the study showed that the

contribution of the top Asian countries in global scientifi c publications has increased rapidly

over recent years. At the same time that the USA and other scientifi cally advanced countries

have maintained slow growth, some Asian countries like China, Japan, India, South Korea

and Taiwan are making spectacular gains in numbers of publications. On comparing cita-

tion impact per paper among the top 10 countries, it was observed that Hong Kong tops the

list with citation impact per paper of 11.29, followed by Japan (11.24) and Singapore (9.99).

However, results showed that publications of Chinese researchers just have received 4 cita-

tions on average. In another study, Jin and Rousseau [16] reported that China’s total citation

rate is low when compared with citation rates for other leading countries.

Iranian researchers have published 120350 papers during the examined years, which

increased from 810 papers in 1996 to 28100 papers in 2010, witnessing a yearly growth

rate of 26%. This fi nding somewhat supports that of Erfanmanesh and Didehgah [7] who

found 28.7% yearly growth rate for Iranian publications in Scopus during 1998-2007. In

sum, 0.51% of the total publications and 0.21% of the total citations of the Scopus database

belong to the Iranian researchers. Moin, Mahmoudi and Rezaei [26] also reported that

Iranian global share in scientifi c output increased from 0.0003% in 1970 to 0.29% in 2003.

Results of the study showed that about 75% of total Hong Kong publications in Scopus

were cited while this percentage for Japanese and Chinese publications were 73.55% and

50.78%, respectively. Moreover, 57.19% of total Iranian publications have received citations

in Scopus. In another study, Erfanmanesh and Didehgah [7] found that about 65% out of

the total Iranian publications in Scopus during 1998-2007 are cited.

The study of high productivity areas of research in top Asian countries showed that

Medicine contributed the highest publications share in Thailand (30.9%), Japan (25.19%)

and India (19.08). Additionally, Engineering has been identifi ed as the highest priority area

of research in Singapore (37.49%), China (33.77%), Taiwan (41.44%), Hong Kong (28.66%),

South Korea (27.15%), Malaysia (25.08%) and Iran (24.35%). Consistent with this fi nding,

Erfanmanesh and Didehgah [7] found that Engineering reserachers are the most produc-

tive Iranian authors in Scopus. The study of most productive universities showed that the

National University of Singapore has the highest share among the top Asian countries uni-

versities’, which has individually produced 43.7% of the total research output of Singapore

during 1996-2010. The fi nding that the Tehran University contributed 13566 papers and

accounted for 11.27% share in the commulative publications output of Iran in consistent

with that of Moin, Mahmoudi and Rezaei [26] who found that the Tehran University is the

highly productive university in Iran.

International collaboration of the top Asian countries was also investigated in this study.

Based on the fi ndings, Hong Kong has the highets international collaborative share with

47.77% of the total research output of this country, followed by Thailand, Singapore, Malay-

sia and South Korea. Additionally, the percentage of Iranian publications with international

author teams was 24.53% of the total publications of this country. This fi nding is somewhat

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consistent with that of Erfanmanesh and Didehgah [7] who found that the international

collaborative publications share of Iranian researchers in Scopus was 24.3% during 1998 to

2007. They have concluded that Iranian researchers, especially those who are working in

Iranian universities and research centers, have little tendency to collaborate with research-

ers from other countries. Results of the study revealed that the international collaborative

publications share of China was only 16.57% of the total publications of this country.

The study of scientifi c collaborations of the top Asian countries with each other showed

that China is the most important collaborator of Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Additionally, India, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Iran have the highest number of

collaborative linkage with Japan. The highest publication collaboration of Iran in Medicine

was with Thailand and Hong Kong, in Chemistry was with China and Taiwan, in Engi-

neering was with Singapore and Japan, in Physics and Astronomy was with Malaysia and

South Korea and in Agriculture and Biology was with India. Collaboration network of

the top Asian countries in Scopus was also visualized using the UCINet software. Results

showed that with respect to degree centrality or number of co-authorships, China takes the

top spot, followed by Japan and Hong Kong. These countries with the highest degree cen-

trality are more central to the structure of the network and tend to have a greater capacity

to infl uence others. The mean degree centrality across all countries is 36507 (SD = 31445).

Additionally, the strongest partnerships in the network exist between China and Japan

with the total of 35959 co-authorship.

To sum up, China and Japan together have published 3313000 papers, which account

for 10.2% share of the total documents indexed in Scopus during 1996-2010. Additionally,

according to Wagner et al., [31] some Asian countries like China, Japan, Taiwan, South

Korea, and Singapore are categorized as “scientifi cally advanced countries” in science and

technology, while Iran is categorized as a “scientifi cally developing country”. However,

the Iranian international collaborative share with other top Asian countries is very poor.

Only 2.84% of the Iranian publications have been published through collaboration with

top Asian countries in science and technology. According to scientifi c capabilities of the

top Asian countries, Iranian researchers should improve their international collaboration

with these countries. In order to improve Iran’s share and rank in science and technology,

both in qualitative and quantitative level, decision-makers should make possibilities for

researchers to facilitate collaboration with researchers from top Asian countries.

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