بررسي موضوعي مقالات جغرافياي روستايي در مجلات علمي پژوهشي كشور (سال هاي ۱۳۲۷-۱۳۸۷)

A Thematic Study of Articles on Rural Geography in Scientific Research Journals of Iran (A Review of Articles Published between 1948 and 2008)

اهداف: مقاله حاضر بر اساس نتايج بانك اطلاعاتي مقالات علمي- پژوهشي مجله هاي جغرافيايي كشور، به بررسي و طبقه بندي موضوعي مقالات جغرافياي روستايي پرداخته است. روش: جامعه آماري شامل ???? مقاله جغرافيايي از ?? مجله علمي پژوهشي كشوراست كه طي سال‌هاي ????-???? به چاپ رسيده است. موضوع بندي مقاله ها، بر اساس فهرست سرفصل هاي دروس تمامي مقاطع تحصيلي رشته جغرافيا انجام گرفته است و ورود اطلاعات به رايانه و پردازش آن‌ها، در پايگاه داده ها به وسيله زبان برنامه نويسي Visual C# ذخيره شده است، همچنين براي قابليت جستجوي مقالات از نرم افزار Microsoft Access استفاده شده است. يافته ها/ نتايج: اين بررسي نشان داد كه 5/45 درصد مقالات جغرافيايي در سال هاي ??-?? نوشته شده و ?? درصد آن‌ها در حوزه مطالعات جغرافياي انساني بوده است كه از آن ميان، ?? درصد در زمينه موضوعات مختلف جغرافياي روستايي تاليف شده است. نتيجه‌گيري : مهم‌ترين عامل افزايش مقالات در سال هاي اخير، از نظر ?? تن از استادان جغرافيا«كسب امتياز براي ارتقا به مرتبه علمي بالاتر» بوده است.

1. INTRODUCTION Dissemination of information through creating databases plays an undeniable role in the advancement of science and research. Databases are banks in which data are stored, maintained and retrieved by means of analytical and systematic methods and computer equipment. 2.THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Given the novelty and credibility of articles written about different geographical subjects, this paper seeks to create a database for all articles published in specialized journals of Geography since the publication of the first paper in 1948 until 2008 with the aim of resolving researchers problem about accessibility of resource, preventing parallel research and doing the groundwork for producing new articles. Therefore, this paper attempts to offer a descriptive-analytical report on the results of this research project so as to create a database of geographic papers and examine the status of articles on rural geography. This plan covers geographic articles that have received scientific-research rank by Ministry of Science, Research and Technology before 2008 as well as scientific journals and specialized geographic magazines published in Faculties of Literature in Iranian Universities. This study seeks to answer the following key questions: What is the place of articles on rural geography among other geographical papers? What factors have contributed to the increased quality and quantity of rural geography papers in recent years? 3. METHODOLOGY This study has a descriptive – analytical approach with a theoretical nature and is based on the library method, field study and document analysis. The study covers the articles published in journals with scientific-research rank from Ministry of Science, Research and Technology before 2008. Given the interdisciplinary nature of Geography, many articles in this field including geographical journals and special issues produced in Faculties of Letters and Humanities by the experts of geography have been included in this study. At the end, a total of 19 journals were chosen for the case study in this article. After collecting a list of geographic articles along with the encoding and determining appropriate keywords based on list of geography courses approved by the Supreme Council of Planning of Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, the articles were classified based on their subjects and processed by computer. Then, they were saved at Dot.net database using Asp.net programming language. To enable the search feature with the aim of obtaining desired outputs from a large volume of data, the software of geographic papers database was created using SQL Server. This software was used for thematic review and the identifying the trend of temporal variations in the production of geographical papers. To investigate the factors involved in qualitative and quantitative development of geographical articles in recent years, the opinions of professors and researchers were collected through questionnaires and then assessed by factor analysis to find main factors. To determine the number of samples, a pilot study with 20 questionnaires was conducted. The results of this pilot study showed that the variance of the study variable (qualitative and quantitative development of geographical articles in recent years-) was equal to 0.48. Accordingly, using Cochranʹs formula (without having target population size), a total sample size of 88 subjects was specified at the error level of 0.1. Then, questionnaires were emailed to the participants and after receiving comments, the factor analysis was conducted on them using KMO method and Bartlett Test. 4. DISCUSSION The results showed that the most important factor involved in the quantitative development of articles on rural geography was “its effect on promoting academic degree of professors”. That is, about 82% of participants confirmed this factor in their answers. The second factor which was expressed by 79% of participants was the “obligation of extracting an article from the PhD dissertation to obtain thesis defense permit". The third factor was "increased acceptance of graduate students" and "acceptance of students with more articles in PhD interviews", which was confirmed by about 68% of participants. The factor with the lowest effect was "providing bonuses for article published by professors" which was stated by 46% of participants. 5. CONCLUSION & SUGGESTIONS Using the database of geographic articles published in specialized journals of universities and higher education institutes over 60 years (1948-2008) and drawing on the comments of professors of geography about the factors contributing to the qualitative and quantitative development of geography papers in recent years, it was found that of 2388 articles published in 19 journals, geographical studies with 31.3%, human geography studies and rural development respectively with 19.2% and 10% had the highest frequencies. More than half of the papers were about human geography (57%), 36% about natural geography, 4% about philosophy and schools of geography and 3%about methods and research instruments in geography. Of the total 1363 papers in the field of human geography, 30% were about various topics of rural geography (rank 1), 20% in the field of urban geography issues (rank 2), and 10.5% about political geography. The first paper in the field of rural geography was published in 1963 under the title of “Rural Sociology” and until 1978; only 9 papers were published in the field of rural geography. This figure gradually increased to 451 papers until the end of the study period (in 2008). Most rural geography articles (26.7%) were about “rural economy in Iran” and “rural planning in Iran" with 18.7% and "rural management" with 13% were in the next order of importance.