Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Associate Prof., Kashan Botanical Garden, Research Institute of Forests and Rangelands, Agricultural Research, Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Tehran, Iran
2 Social Determinants of Health (SDH) Research Center, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, Iran
Abstract
Background and objective: Bibliometric analyses serve as powerful tools for mapping knowledge and identifying research trends. However, these analyses primarily focus on international scientific output, while national journals hosting indigenous research receive less attention. This study aimed to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the articles published in the Iranian Journal of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Research that have been indexed in Scopus.
Methodology: The present study is applied in its objective and, in terms of type, is a scientometric research that, using retrospective bibliometric analysis and science mapping, examined the knowledge structure and research trends of 235 articles indexed from the Iranian Journal of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Research in the Scopus database up to October 22, 2025. Bibliographic data, including authors, publication year, and keywords, were extracted from Scopus and standardized in Excel software. Other examined indicators, including Citation, Field-Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI), Prominence percentile, Mendeley readership, and SciVal topics, were manually extracted for each article. After standardizing author names, authors with the highest number of articles were identified. Furthermore, VOSviewer software was used to map keyword co-occurrence. In the co-word analysis, keywords were first extracted, and after standardization and thesaurus creation, a co-occurrence map was drawn. Additionally, author keywords were thematically categorized.
Results: Findings indicated that 90 articles (38.2%) received at least one citation. The average citation for cited articles was 1.8. Results showed that more than 159 plant species from 42 families were investigated in these articles. The highest number of investigated plant species belonged to the genera Satureja, Nepeta, Salvia, Mentha, Papaver, Thymus, Allium, Artemisia, Citrus, Dracocephalum, Lallemantia, Stachys, and Viola; accordingly, the majority of studied species were classified within the families Lamiaceae, Asteraceae, and Apiaceae. Analysis of 1135 author keywords showed that all author keywords were organized into 12 main thematic categories. The keyword co-occurrence map clustered 47 frequent keywords into 8 distinct clusters. The keywords “Essential oil” and “Medicinal plant”, with 64 and 46 occurrences respectively, formed the central core of the network. Keywords “Antioxidant activity” (29 occurrences), “Drought stress”, “Flavonoid”, and “Proline” (each with 16 occurrences) were also among the highly frequent keywords. Co-authorship analysis revealed that, among the 649 contributing authors, only 99 (15.3%) had at least one co-authored article with another author within the analyzed dataset.
Conclusion: The Iranian Journal of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Research demonstrates a strong emphasis on high-value native taxa, particularly Satureja species, and frequently addresses ecologically relevant challenges, such as drought stress. While exploratory work touching upon emerging domains e.g., nanotechnology appears in a limited number of recent articles, such themes remain nascent and warrant further development to constitute a sustained research direction. To strengthen scientific impact, strategic focus on existing strengths and the development of international collaborations are recommended. Encouraging and inviting influential authors to publish systematic review articles in the journal's core fields, as well as activating and enhancing the journal's official presence on scientific social networks like ResearchGate to increase article accessibility and visibility, are suggested. Furthermore, forming interdisciplinary research consortia involving experts from botany, chemistry, pharmacy, social sciences, and new technologies can lead to more focused, in-depth, and applied research on native species and the investigation of their economic and social dimensions.
Keywords
- Bibliometric Analysis
- Iranian Journal of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Research
- Scientometrics
- Co-word Analysis
- VOSviewer
Main Subjects
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