A content analysis of articles published in recent decade in environmental health journals with an emphasis on air pollution

Abstract

Introduction: Air pollution is one of the environmental concerns of many countries, including Iran. One of the most common and effective ways to ex- plain the importance of this issue is to perform research and publish scientific articles. Therefore, this study aimed to monitor scientific publications on air pollution in the specialized environmental health journals of Iran within the last ten years.
 Materials and methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conduct- ed on all articles published in the field of air pollution in five specialized en- vironmental health journals within 10 years (2008-2017). Data were collected using a checklist in accordance with the research objectives. The variables in the checklist were selected based on the recommended items for writing medical articles by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME). The ob- tained data was analyzed using descriptive statistics.
 Results: Reviewing 1276 articles in 102 issues of the 5 specialized environ- mental health journals showed that 11.6 % of articles were published in the field of air pollution. The trend in air pollution researches over the past de- cade was a slow and growing trend. Studying articles related to air pollution showed that the highest proportion of articles (45.3 %) in this field were relat- ed to measuring the organic matter. The analysis of the content of the articles showed that, from the research methodology point of view, most articles (24.3
 %) were performed by laboratory method.
 Conclusion: Due to the widespread nature of air pollution issue in many cit- ies of Iran and other countries in recent years and its destructive effects on hu- man and other creatures, it is expected to focus and perform more researches on this issue. Hence, health policymakers should place the air pollution issue at a higher priority, and also it would be useful for researchers, especially graduate students, to focus on research in this area, drawing international co- operation.