Relationship between Development Indicators and Contribution to the Science: Experiences from Iran

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between selected development indicators and provincial level contribution to the global knowledge. The research has focused on Iranian papers published in Thompson Reuters in 2012. Data was collected running an advanced search limiting the results to the papers published with their address belong to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Nearly, 28,000 scientific papers were analyzed. The separate analysis on the provincial affiliation of the authors was made. Contribution of each province was analyzed against selected developmental indicators such as human development indicator (HDI), family size, healthcare centers, population, universities and students. Findings showed that there is significant relationship between science infrastructure and developmental indicators and also their contribution to the knowledge. But amongst them relationship between family size and science production was negative. Based on findings it is concluded that scientific progress has its grassroots in developmental programs and in turn, developmental achievements will flourish the science in societies.