Introduction: Scientometric studies can help the researchers to trace the dynamics and life of a scientific filed and contribution and position of each country and see the whole picture of the structure of that scientific filed. This study aimed to investigate the trend of scientific productions on traditional medicine in the world and contribution of Iran to this area in Scopus database.
Methods: This study was conducted through scientometric method. The research population was all scientific documents published on traditional medicine in Scopus database in a ten-year period as of 2007 to 2016. The documents in Scopus were searched by an appropriate search strategy using title, abstracts and keywords. Retrieved information was analyzed by Excel software.
Results: 23260 documents on traditional medicine have been indexed in Scopus during the time period studied here. 159 countries have contributed to the science production in this area and Iran was ranked sixth with 1253 documents (%38.5). The number of articles published from Iran has been increasing and has increased from 27 titles in 2007 to 264 titles in 2016. The position of Tehran University of Medical Sciences in science production was significant and this university was one of the top universities and institutes producing science in this area. The articles on traditional medicine from Iran have been published in 159 journals. Only 21 journals have published more than 10 titles from Iran, out of which 3 journals are among the 20 top journals.
Conclusion: This study showed that Iran’s contribution to the world scientific productions on traditional medicine has dramatically grown in an increasing trend in recent 10 years. However, what is important is addressing the quality of these documents. Publishing articles in the top journals on this area and international cooperation with researchers from other countries can increase the chances for receiving a citation, which is one of the most important indicators of quality.