Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis of the Articles Published in the Architecture and Urbanism Journal of Armanshar (from 2008 until 2013)

Nowadays the term of “science production” has found a great position in the literature of our country so that the movements of science and software production have occupied most of the politicians and academic planners in all over the country. The production of science is considered to be the most reasonable and reliable index for evaluating the scientific rank and position of countries. Different definitions of science production can be provided; in one point of view, science production means a theory, method or significant achievement which talks globally and is being published in an international and reliable journals and have been indexed in reliable intuitions such as ISI and available for all academician. Considering the journal as a system for producing science, this study is going to analyze the articles in Armanshahr Journal which have been published in this journal from its beginning of publication until now (2008-2013). The descriptive-analytical method was used and the type of research is practical. The method for collecting data is quantitative content analysis. The purpose of this study is to analyze the articles which have been published in the journal of architecture and urbanism from 2008 until 2013. The data were extracted from 143 published papers which have published in 10 volumes of the journal. Excel software is used for charting. In this study 8 parameters were investigated. These parameters are “Participation of Academic and Specialized Institutions “, “Academic Rank of Authors”, “Used Methods”, “Thematic share of articles”, “References”, “Time for Peer Review” , “ Participation of Academic and Specialized groups” and “the Separation of articles based on the extracted sources”. The academic ranks of 318 writers of articles were investigated in Armanshahr journal. MS writers have had the highest proportion of articles and then writers with the academic ranks of assistant professors, PHD students, associate professors, full professors, teachers and faculty members have participated in writing the articles. In all topics for writing the articles there had been a trend for team working, therefore, about 82.51 percent of articles have had more than one writer. In the qualitative analysis of research methods of the articles, it was concluded that the descriptive-analytical method have been used in most of the articles. Architecture had the highest proportion of the topics and the lowest proportion had belonged to practical arts and regional planning. The average numbers of Latin sources which had been used in the articles is about 11.96 sources and this number for Persian sources is about 8.8 in each article. The period of receiving and accepting articles has not been mentioned for 8 investigated articles among 143 ones; but in other articles, the lowest time for accepting the articles had been 17 days and highest time had been near 14 months and the average time for accepting articles had been about 4 months and 18 days. Due to the specialized nature of the journal, the participation of each scientific and specialized group in term of the numbers of articles had been low and also the specialized groups of architecture and urbanism had allocated a major portion of articles to themselves (near to 85 percent). Among 143 articles which were investigated, 29 articles (20.27 percent) had been extracted from the previous sources and presented as article. 5.6 percent of these articles have been extracted from PHD theses, 11.88 percent from MS theses and 2.8 percent from research projects. Results show that among all 143 published articles in the journal, the universities of tehran with considering the unspecified articles have allocated 104 articles about 72.72 percent (the highest amount) to itself; Iran University of Science and Technology 27.27 percent, Modares University 17.48 percent, Tehran University 16.08 percent, Beheshti University 4.89 percent and etc. The proportion of other countries have been 23.77 percent and the proportion of foreign universities (Berlin and Northern Cyprus) have been 2.98 percent. Investigations show that in all topics of articles, there had been a trend for team working, so that about 82.51 percent of articles have had more than one writer. Also among 318 writers of articles in journal, 233 were male (73.28 percent) and 85 were female (26.72). In addition, the highest proportions of the writers have had the Assistant scientific rank. In the qualitative analysis of research methods of the articles it was concluded that the descriptive-analytical method has been used in the most of the articles. Architecture had the highest proportion of the topics and the lowest proportion had belonged to practical arts and regional planning. In general, the writers had taken part in representing the articles in 13 different scientific and specialized fields but due to the specialized nature of the journal the participation of each scientific and specialized group  in terms of the number of articles had been low and specialized groups of architecture and urbanism have allocated a major portion of articles to themselves. Among 143 investigated articles, 29 articles (20.27 percent) had been extracted from the previous sources and presented as article. 5.6 percent of these articles have been extracted from PHD theses, 11.88 percent from MS theses and 2.8 percent from research projects. In the studied articles, 1260 sources, near to 42.4 percent had belonged to Persian resources and 1711 sources, near to 57.6 percent had belonged to Latin resources. The average number of sources for 143 articles had been 20.77 sources for each article which is a satisfying number.