Journal of

Background and Aim: Quality of printed papers in 4 four medical journals affiliated to one of the universities of medical sciences in Iran was assessed based on methodological and statistical methods.

Materials and Methods: In this cross sectional study conducted in 2010, out of all articles published between the years 2002 to 2008 in one of the universities of medical sciences for affiliated journals that were equal to 1568, a sample of 162 articles were selected with Multi-stage stratified sampling method . For data collection, standard questionnaire was used to develop an information form. One sample t-test and Kruskal-Wallis test were used to compare scores from different parts of article.

Results: Cross sectional studies with 61.7% (100 papers) formed most of studies. Median of authors and number of references for each article were 3 and 19, respectively and 10% of articles had more than 35 references. Material and methods with 3.53 points from 4 points (88.2%) earned the mighest score which was of high quality and conclusion achieved the lowest score. Also p-value has been reported correctly in 102 articles (81.6%). In 95 articles (58.6%) results were not compare with the similar internal articles whereas only in 21 articles (13%) comparison was not made with similar external researches.

Conclusion: The present study showed that the overall quality of the medical articles is not desirable. Hence, employing experts in research methods and statistics in various medical studies can improve the quality of articles in this branch of science.

 Background and Aim: Scientific journals are the most major tools in disseminating research findings. With the increasing number and price of scientific journals, libraries need to select journals. Citation analysis is a practical method in identifying the best titles to be subscribed. This study was to identify core journals in the field of dentistry using citation analysis.

 Materials and Methods: Two hundered and seventy six documents including dentistry theses (241 titles) and faculty papers (35 titles) indexed in Science Citation Index (SCIE) were selected and their references were extracted and evaluated using citation analysis methods. The distribution frequency of journals confirmed the Bradford’s Law of Scattering representing core dentistry journals.

 Results: Eleven thousand twenty three references were totally extracted. Average reference per theses and papers was 39/25 and 44/74, respectively. English journals and books were the most frequent referred documents having 95% of total references approximately. The most updated references were in English dated during 2001-2005 and 2006-2010. Using the Bradford’s Law, five journals were introduced as core dentistry journals.

 Conclusion: Selecting and subscribing core journals leads into cost-effectiveness in libraries and plays an important role in meeting user’s needs. While having many challenges in accessing scientific resources, core journals selection and subscription is an intelligent action resulting in effective use of financial resources.