Factors Effective in Enhancing the Citation Rate of Iranian Journal Articles with Impact Factor Reported by the Journal Citation Reports 2020

Scientific productions result from researchers’ thoughts and efforts; when published in credible journals or indexed by valid databases and cited by other researchers, they gain credibility. Publications also gain more credibility when they are indexed in actual and valid citation databases. The publication of scientific products in these databases increases visibility and the possibility and opportunity to increase their citations. The present research aims to investigate the factors effective in citing the articles published in Iranian journals with Impact Factor (IF) indexed in Journal Citation Reports (JCR) 2020. This applied study was done using scientometric indices. The research population consisted of Iranian publications with IF indexed in the JCR in 2020. Microsoft Excel was employed for data collection, and SPSS software was used for data analysis. The results showed that Iran, with 27,446 citations, acquired about 17% of citing Iranian publications with IF indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC). Also, 53.31% of articles had an organizational affiliation (publishers and publishing country) to public universities. The variables “subject area, multiple authorship, number of references, and inter-university cooperation” positively and significantly correlated with the number of citations the Iranian publications with IF indexed in the WOSCC had received (citation rate). Also, the number of keywords, length of article titles, and inter-university scientific collaboration had no significant collaboration with the citation rate.