Co-authorship Network Analysis of Student Research Committee Publications in Iranian Medical Universities Indexed in Scopus

Background and aim: Engaging in research and familiarizing oneself with the research field are integral aspects of student development programs, particularly at postgraduate level. This study aims to analyze and map the co-authorship network within publications produced by the student research committee of Iran's Ministry of Health and Medical Education. Materials and methods: This is an applied research that utilizes scientometric techniques. The research community includes 2178 documents with the organizational affiliation of the Student Research Committee of Medical Sciences Universities of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education, which were retrieved from the Scopus database from 1985 to 2023. After data cleaning in Excel software and data homogenization, the data were transferred to BibExcel for frequency analysis. Subsequently, UCINET software was employed to calculate the correlation and centrality matrix. Furthermore, VosViewer software was used to visualize the data through network maps. Findings: An analysis of student research committee publications revealed 900 co-authored articles. Salari and Mohammadi exhibited the highest co-authorship frequency, with 10 publications. The findings showed that 38 countries participated in the scientific productions of the student research committee. America and England have cooperated the most with authors of student research committees with 58 and 14 scientific publications, respectively. Yousefi, Nouri, and Mohammadi emerged as the most prolific research committee authors. Sadeghi got the highest score in terms of centrality index and Karimi got the highest score in terms of closeness and intermediateness index. Furthermore, the five-author co-authorship pattern represented the most prevalent format (19.04%), with the single-author format accounting for less than 1% of publications. Conclusion: In studies by student research committee, the five-author co-authorship pattern has been the dominant pattern among the scientific documents of the student research committees, which indicates proper scientific cooperation among students.