The Impact of Iranian Pediatrics Articles based on Altmetric Method: 2010-2016

Abstract Introduction: Recent years has witnessed a great use of web2 tools in scientific societies, and Altmetrics method has received more attention by social media as a means of measuring the impact of scholarly documents. This study aims to explore the impact of Iranian pediatrics articles using Altmetrics method. Methods:  In this descriptive-analytic study, a scientometric analysis method was used. The study population consisted of 1332 research articles, review articles and conference abstracts published from Iran in the field of pediatrics at Science Citation Index Database, during 2010-2016, that 256 of them received Altmetric score. Altmetrics indicators of articles were collected using Webometric Analysis software and altmetric.com API, and the collected data were analyzed using SPSS19 software. Results: According to the findings, 256 articles out of 1332 articles in the field of pediatrics from Iran, had altmetrics score and were mentioned in 10 social media, i.e. Mendeley, CiteULike, Weblogs, Mainstreams, Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, Pinterest, Google plus and Faculty1000. The average rank of Iranian pediatrics articles with regard to Altmetrics score was 0.43. Conclusion: Although there were a good number of articles on pediatrics, they were heterogeneous concerning quality and Altmetrics score. Writing international articles has an important role in increasing the impact of articles. It seems that writers in this field should be more careful in selecting journals to publish their articles.