Investigating the Status of Intra-Disciplinary and Extra-Disciplinary Relationships of the Physiotherapy Articles of Iran Indexed In the Web of Science during 2013-2017

Physiotherapy is an interdisciplinary field. Accordingly, to grow and develop itself, in addition to intra-disciplinary relationships, it needs significant extra-disciplinary relationships. The present study investigates intra-disciplinary and extradisciplinary relationships in physiotherapy articles of Iran indexed on the Web of Science (WoS) from 2013 to 2017. In this study, to answer the research questions, the methods of content analysis, citation analysis, and scientometric approach were used. The statistical population included 210 articles on Iran in physiotherapy indexed on the WoS from 2013 to 2017. The trend of publishing 210 articles on Iran in physiotherapy has been growing from 2013 to 2017, with some neglect. Out of 7058 references in the 210 articles, the share of intra-disciplinary and extradisciplinary references is 75% and 46%, respectively. The examined articles have been cited in 758 articles, of which 81.14% were extra-disciplinary citations, and 18.86% were intra-disciplinary citations. During the research period, physiotherapy articles of Iran in the research period have benefited from intra-disciplinary relationships more than extra-disciplinary ones. Relationships between articles citing the examined articles were more than in other scientific fields and extradisciplinary.