Scientific output is one of the most important determinants of economic development in every country. The process of economic growth and social development is entirely related to the count of scientific output in different countries. The purpose of the present paper is to examine the scientific output in Iran and compare it to selected Middle Eastern countries. Our findings indicate that not only scientific output in Iran increased during 1996-2009 but this country presented the fastest-growing

more »

... rate in the world in the last 5 years of this period. The best performance of Iran has been in the field of engineering and ranked first in Middle East. Also, in other fields this country performance has been by far better than the average of the region. The interesting point regarding the Iranian performance is that at the beginning of this period the scientific output of Iran has been much less than countries such as Egypt and even Saudi Arabia in the region. Iran ranked 22 nd in 20 in the World and if maintains its current trend it will soon be among the first 10 countries in the World.