Ramin Rahmani
Heidar Mokhtari
Abbas Doulani
Mohammad Karim Saberi
Abstract
Background
ResearchGate as a main scientific social medium and Scopus as a known citation database have a main role in sharing research output among specialists in different disciplines.
Objective
This study aimed to evaluate the performances of Iranian researchers in the occupational health field and correlate some related variables. It also used regression analysis as one of the machine learning approaches for predicting researchers’ scientific performance.
Methods
This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in 2024 on ResearchGate and Scopus indicators of Iranian researchers in Occupational Health Engineering affiliated in Iranian universities (n = 213). Data were extracted from ResearchGate and Scopus, and the researchers’ demographic information was collected from the Iranian Scientometrics Information Database in medicine.
Results
A total of 149 researchers (70%) were active on ResearchGate. One hundred and forty-four researchers (96.6%) had RG scores with a mean rate of 11.70. In ResearchGate, they shared a total of 4,275 research items with a mean rate of 28.89 items per researcher. With a total of 24,235 citations, the mean rate of citations per paper was 169.48. Of them, 143 (95.9%) had ResearchGate h-indexes with a mean rate of 5.38.
In Scopus, 198 researchers (93%) had a total of 2,935 published documents in the database with a mean rate of 14.82 documents per researcher. One hundred and eighty-six researchers (87.3%) had a total of 18,749 citations with a mean rate of 100.80 citations and a mean h-index of 4.41. Researchers with more shared documents in ResearchGate had better performance in Scopus. Linear regression analysis showed that researchers’ presence in ResearchGate could predict their citation counts (R² = 0.82, β = 0.911, p = 0.000) and h-indexes (R² = 0.83, β = 0.900, p < 0.001) in Scopus.
Conclusion
Iranian researchers in the Occupational Health Engineering field fairly use the capacities of ResearchGate for influencing their research output. However, their interactions in social media tools should be encouraged for more reach and influence of their scientific productions.