Introduction
Presently, institutions and organizations require performance evaluation and analysis to ensure they are moving on the right path or toward obtaining their goals. Given their goal and nature, universities and research institutions analyze their scientific output to evaluate their capabilities [1]. One evaluation metric for the scientific capabilities of universities is the number of listed articles by the faculty members and researchers in global databases. As the works listed in these informational databases follow scientific standards and international guidelines, they have high qualities; therefore, listed articles by the faculty members can be a decisive and important factor for evaluating a given university [2]. Scientometrics is an interdisciplinary major that provides statistical and evaluative approaches based on library and information science. This interdisciplinary field has different theories, components, rules, levels, and indices. 
Science mapping is a representation of how fields, scholars, and articles are connected to each other [3]. Publishing articles in journals that are listed in the most valid global listing organizations is one of the main approaches to introducing research at an international level. An important factor in the international publication of research articles is the presence of these articles in valid global databases, such as Web of Science (WOS), Scopus, or any other valid databases. Meanwhile, the international rating of these journals is provided [4]. Unlike before, science production and writing of scientific papers require more cooperation and a combination of thoughts. In the field of research and science production, we require teamwork more than ever. In other words, there is a close relationship between cooperation and science production [5]. Scientific and technological advancements are no longer bound to only one country’s scientific progressions. Currently, many journals emphasize cooperation and co-authorship; both these metrics currently show an upward trend [6]. It has been a long time since interaction among specialists in scientific areas has become a necessity. Many phases in research procedures require close interactions, including dialogues between specialists, drafting, and reading of articles and letters. Specialists not only share their information and the research results, they also produce the research results in a cooperative manner. Considering the significant rise of co-authored articles among specialists and also research institutes, it can be concluded that cooperation is presently the prerequisite in today’s world and modern science [7].
The scientology journal of Tier 2 universities, which in terms of number exceeds Tier 1 and 3 universities, has always attracted attention. Given the high number of these universities, we have randomly examined and compared five medical universities of Ghazvin, Semnan, Hamedan, Zanjan, and Golestan. They were compared to the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences. With 21 medical and non-medical academic departments and eight research centers, the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences is one of the major and well-known universities in the field of scientific research. In addition, it is considered the hub of rehabilitation in the country. This university has the richest source in the field of rehabilitation, while the central library of this university is considered the country’s main round-the-clock library of rehabilitation. The aim of this study was to provide a spatial representation of how majors, areas, scholars, and articles of the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences are connected to each other and also its science production status in the Scopus database compared to other Tier 2 medical universities.
Materials and Methods
This is an applied, descriptive survey-based study. To conduct this research, we utilized bibliometric indices for analyzing scientific production. We also used data visualization and science mapping by analyzing the co-occurrence of words for examining the subjects and scientific cooperation. The research population consisted of Tier 2 universities of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education. Five universities were randomly chosen and compared to the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences. The statistical population of this research consisted of all produced documents listed in the Scopus database by scholars of these universities. To explore the documents, we used the organization search option of the database to distinctively search for each university: University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences and Health Services, Ghazvin University of Medical Sciences, Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Semnan University of Medical Sciences.
We extracted the Scientometrics data of other universities from the Scientometrics Platform of Medical Universities (NOPA), in addition to the Scopus database. It is noteworthy to mention that all organizational dependencies are integrated into the Scopus database; therefore, we did not consider other writings of university titles. We exported the data after exploring the documents and utilized the following software for their given aims: 
Bibexcel for data analysis, defining co-occurrence matrix and data exportation;
VOSviewer for science mapping from the keywords of the documents;
Pajek for mapping the scientific cooperation of countries and scholars.
VOSviewer is created with the purpose of facilitating bibliometric analysis. This software can be used for scholars or journals mapping based on co-cited data, or for mapping keywords based on co-occurrence data [8].
Results
Based on the analysis done on the selected universities, we have gathered the following results from the Scopus database and the NOPA. At first, because of the emphasis on this institution, the scientometrics data of the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences was presented in abbreviations. In total, 3726 documents were published by 1380 authors in this database, which are provided in the following tables and figures.
According to Figure 1, there is an upward trend in the number of documents published by the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences. This figure shows an increase in the number of document production. The first published document dates back to 1977 and during a 22-year period, no document is listed from this journal in the Scopus database. From the year 1999, the publications resume and follow an upward trend; i.e., from one document in 1977 to 409 documents in 2020. This shows an increase in the number of publications compared to the preceding years. 
To analyze the subjects, we analyzed the keywords of the articles. Our analysis showed that in total, 3133 articles had 12455 keywords, which gives seven keywords for each article on average. To analyze the status of subjects among articles, we created a density map of keywords (Figure 2). The color spectrum provided in the figure shows the importance and the density of keywords and subjects: red shows the highest density and abundance of articles, and yellow is next in importance and density. We can identify the important subjects and areas using the density map. As shown in the figure, the keywords of “Genetics” and “Quality of Life” were more frequent.
Figure 3 shows the countries that ensured the highest cooperation with the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences. Considering the scientific cooperation with other countries in producing scientific articles, the results showed that 3538 articles are the outcome of Iran’s cooperation with 129 countries. Accordingly, the highest number of cooperative articles belongs to the United States with 340 documents, followed by UK and Sweden with 196 and 190 articles, respectively. Next, to analyze the cooperation of the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences with other countries, we used Pajek to draw the network of scientific cooperation of countries. In the network of co-authored articles of countries, each node shows a country and the lines between them define scientific cooperation. The size of the circles shows the number of articles of the given country and the thickness of the lines depicts the number of cooperative articles between the connected countries.
According to Figure 4, the highest citation was 374 times, and the lowest was one. On average, articles have received six citations. To clarify the status of the authors, a density map is created based on the authors’ names (Figure 4). The size of the author’s name and their place are set according to their scientific relationship with other published scholars and the relationship among scholars. The spatial area that each author has taken is according to his scientific output. Meanwhile, his position on the map is based on his cooperation with other scholars. Active scholars are positioned at denser parts of the network based on the number of their articles and their connection to other scholars. Regarding scientific cooperation in article publications, Hossein Najam Abadi was found with the highest number, with 268 articles among other scholars.
Table 1 sorts the universities based on the number of documents listed in the Scopus database.


The University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences is placed after the Hamedan University of Medical Sciences. According to the starting year of cooperation with the Scopus database, this university is ranked higher compared to others as it has been listed in the database since 1977. All universities after the source university, have the most connection with the Tehran University of Medical Sciences. In addition, the highest international scientific cooperation is with the United States. Document type is mostly articles written in English. 
Figure 5 shows a sharp increase in six Tier 2 universities in publishing articles, among which the Hamedan University of Medical Sciences and Health Services has published the highest number of articles in recent years. The University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences and Zanjan University of Medical Sciences are placed in the second and third positions, respectively. 
Table 2 sorts the universities based on the number of citations.


The University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences is ranked third regarding citations after Hamadan University of Medical Sciences and Health Services and Golestan University of Medical Sciences. Also, the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences is nationally ranked 23. This university shows an upward trend compared to other Tier 2 universities in terms of the number of published articles. The ratio of articles to faculty members is 2.61. Meanwhile, in terms of the number of published articles, citations, and H-index, the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences is ranked third after the universities of Golestan and Hamedan. In terms of self-citation, the universities of Hamedan and Semnan are ranked first in the list, followed by the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences. Regarding the publication of international articles and cooperation, this university holds a proper status. Additionally, regarding the top ten articles of CiteScore, the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences is ranked higher than other universities. 
Figure 6 shows the H-index of six Tier 2 universities. The Golestan University of Medical Sciences with 77, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences and Health Services with 72, and the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences and Zanjan University of Medical Sciences with 62 have the highest H-index.
Discussion
The best metric for evaluating universities is the quantity of their scientific output as scientific articles in journals [3]. The results showed a significant quantitative improvement in the scientific output of the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences compared to other universities at its level. The University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences is nationally ranked 23. This university has an upward trend in terms of the number of published articles compared to other Tier 2 universities. The ratio of articles to the number of faculty members (2.61) is considerably good. After the Golestan University of Medical Sciences and Hamadan University of Medical Sciences and Health Services, this university is ranked third in terms of the number of published articles, citations, and H-index. In terms of international articles and cooperation, this university has a proper status. Also, with respect to the top ten articles of CiteScore, the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences ranked higher compared to other selected universities. In total, 3538 documents from 1380 scholars have been published. The first published document in this university dates back to 1977 on Scopus and for 20 years, no articles have been published. However, from 1999, the process of publishing articles started and continued with a rising trend until the year 2021. These findings are in line with the results provided by Valinejad’s study [9]. Around 1165 documents are accessible freely in the database. Most published documents, a total of 2804 articles, are related to medical subjects. Most of the documents published in this database are articles. The most cooperative organizations in this university are the Tehran University of Medical Sciences (701), Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (544), and Iran University of Medical Sciences (462). Regarding the number of scholars, in total, there are 1380 authors showing an average of six authors per article. Meanwhile, a total of 60 articles have been published by one author. The highest number of authors for an article is 49. However, articles with five authors were more frequent (542 articles). 
Anaraki et al. emphasized the addition of authors and an increase in cooperation in scientific papers [10]. Most of the documents have been published in the Iranian Rehabilitation Journal with 324 documents and a SiteScore of 0.7. Part of this growth is due to the development of higher education at universities over recent years. Another reason is the increase in the participation of faculty members with the goal of development. Holding training workshops has been a very effective method in this regard. Riahi Asl et al. also emphasized the scientific cooperation of research bodies with national and international researchers. They also reported that Canadian researchers and the Tehran University of Medical Sciences contribute the most to international scientific cooperation and off-university cooperation with research bodies [11]. Dr. Hossein Najam Abadi with 311 articles and an H-index of 41 is ranked first in this university. This result is in line with the research conducted by Ghafari et al., regarding the analysis of the H-index of the Isfahan faculty members [12]. Keywords of “Genetics” and “Quality of Life (QoL)” were more frequent. In terms of scientific cooperation with other countries in writing articles, the results demonstrated that 3538 articles are the result of Iran’s cooperation with 129 countries. Accordingly, the highest amount of scientific cooperation is with the US with 340 shared documents, followed by. the UK and Sweden. This is in line with the study conducted by Giti et al. [13]. The University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences has a good status compared to the Golestan University of Medical Sciences, Qazvin University of Medical Sciences, Semnan University of Medical Sciences, Hamadan University of Medical Sciences and Health Services, and Zanjan University of Medical Sciences. Regarding the publication of articles, this university is ranked after the Hamadan University of Medical Sciences and Health Services, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, and Semnan University of Medical Sciences. Also, in terms of the H-index, the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences is ranked after the Golestan University of Medical Sciences and Hamadan University of Medical Sciences and Health Services.
Conclusion
Overall, with respect to the type of documents, the number of scientific research articles of this university has increased. The scientific productions of the university have used keywords related to genetics, physiotherapy, prosthesis, and psychology. The findings of this study showed that the authors of the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences demonstrate a strong inclination toward national and international scientific cooperation. According to Godin and Zuckerman, there is a strong correlation between scientific cooperation and article production [14, 15]. The genetics faculty has the highest scientific cooperation, and the results of the study conducted by Ghafari et al., confirm this finding. They concluded that the faculty of chemistry shows the highest activity and cooperation [12]. The University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences had a better status compared to lower-rank universities and requires more effort, planning, and cooperation to increase its scientific level compared to higher-ranking universities. 

Ethical Considerations
Compliance with ethical guidelines
There were no ethical considerations to be considered in this research.

Funding
This research did not receive any grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or non-profit sectors.

Authors' contributions
Conceptualization and Supervision: Marzieh Golchin; Methodology: Marzieh Golchin, Mansoure Faizabadi; Validation: Marzieh Golchin; analysis, research and review: Marzieh Golchin, Anahita Gitti; Sources: Marzieh Golchin, Zahra Faraji; Original draft, and Writing: Marzieh Golchin, Atefeh Zarei; Editing and finalization by: Marzieh Golchin; Supervision: Marzieh Golchin.

Conflict of interest
The authors declared no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments
I would like to express my gratitude to Mansoura Faizabadi and Anahita Gitti who collaborated in writing this article.


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