In an article published this week in Nature magazine, the scientific impact of nations has been compared among 31 countries that in total generate 98 percent of the world’s scientific papers. Among the listed countries, Iran ranks 30th, just above the country of Luxemburg with population 460,000. Iran produced 4813 papers in the period of 1997-2001, which is 0.13 percent of the world’s total production. In terms of citations, Iran shows even a poorer track record. Articles published by Iranian authors recieved only 0.06 percent of total citations. Even though the numbers are very low compared to the other countries on the list, Iran has shown rapid growth in recent years. The number of papers generated in Iran increased by more than 100 percent from the period of 1993-1997 to 1997-2001