[Assessment of Farsi nutrition articles in Iranian scientific journals 2006-2011: an opportunity to revise nutrition research policy]

Periodic assessment is a useful strategy for analyzing the situation of nutrition research, and its results would help direct any future study. This study was conducted to assess Farsi nutrition articles in Iranian scientific journals, during 2006-2011 on the basis of the study design, publication type and subject headings. In a descriptive study, Farsi articles during 2006-2011 were searched and collected using "Iran's Nutrition Publication abstracts" database, and their study design, publication type and subject headings were determined. The data were analyzed using ?2, PASW Statistics 18 to find the significant differences of the study design, publication type and subject headings of the selected articles. The number of Farsi articles was 1518. There was a maximum number of original research articles [98.7%]; while, the number of systematic reviews was only two. "Clinical nutrition" [42.1%] and "techniques and methods" [3.4%] were the most and the least frequent topics respectively. The most frequent articles in study design were descriptives then trials. There was no significant difference in publication patterns of the study design, publication type and subject headings of the articles. Although the number of descriptive research articles has decreased during this period, it is still more than that of analytical articles. The consistent pattern of study design, publication type and subjects, beside the high number of descriptive publications show the necessity of revising the nutrition research policies