title: Social network analysis of Iranian researchers on emergency medicine: a sociogram analysis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The purpose of this study was to report interaction patterns among Iranian authors of emergency medicine using social network analysis methodology, focusing on coauthorship network.
  
  
  METHODS
  The bibliographic data of Iranian authors on the 'emergency medicine' field during the years 2001-2011 were retrieved from the Science Citation Index Expanded database. Co-occurrence matrices were made by BibExcel and were imported to Ucinet and NetDraw to delineate coauthorship network. To detect structural patterns among authors, we considered some measures of social network analysis, such as density, centralisation indices, component analysis and cut-points. Lastly, subject experts separately analysed the content of papers.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Of 116 papers published, the network was composed of 10 components, with the largest component having 25 authors. Using social network analysis measures, we identified science bottlenecks in knowledge sharing, hub authors and accelerators of information flow. Topic analysis showed 'Wounds and Injuries' as the most recent theme in all components because of existence of national registry for trauma, high burden of road traffic injuries and research priority of injuries in Iran.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  because of Iranian low productivity in the emergency medicine field, social network analysis seems to be a proper option for bibliometrics to identify central authors and detect knowledge structure in this field.
authors.affiliation: Emergency Department, Sina Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Hamed Basir
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: Ghafouri
authors.affiliation: Scientometrics Research Center, Kerman University of Medical Sciences, Kerman, Iran.
authors.forename: Hafez
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Mohammadhassanzadeh
authors.affiliation: Research Center for Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran Iranian Center for Evidence-Based Medicine, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran.
authors.forename: Farhad
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Shokraneh
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Rasul-Akram Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Maryam
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vakilian
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Imam Khomeini Hospital, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
authors.forename: Shervin
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Farahmand
mesh_terms: D001319:Authorship; D015706:Bibliometrics; D035843:Biomedical Research; D004635:Emergency Medicine; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D007492:Iran; D012944:Social Support
keywords: communications; methods; research, clinical