Table 1.

Themes and subthemes of challenges of the Iranian National Health Scientific Map

n	Theme	Subtheme
1	Policymaking	Weakness in policy intelligence, inattention to innovation system, reactive policymaking, numerous policymaking centers, public-private role misrule, lack of policymakers commitment to the map, excessive attention to quantitative ranking, support moving on the edge of science, expansion of interdisciplinary areas of science, weakness in policy for persuasion patenting by the private sector
2	Management	Inattention to foresight and long-term strategic planning, lack of management stability, weakness in management commitment to the map, inattention to mega-project management, collaborative management, need to changing manager’s culture and attitude, parallel research centers, lack of need-based research priorities
3	Autonomy of university	The meddling of politics in the university, weakness in university authority, political decision-making for academics, rigidity to becoming third generation university, unclear role of universities related to the science map, political pressures to expand the universities
4	Quantitative development beyond the capacity	Quantitative development of the research centers, quantitative growth of the number of students and articles, focus on the number of papers, need-based research center, expansion of the disciplines, importance of quantitative indicators, inactive journals
5	Science production chain	Inadequate explanation of scientific authority, misleading of science production process, more attention to scientific fashion and prestige, weakness in transformation of scientific capital to technology, weakness in transformation of technology to product, less attention to diffusion of products, weakness in reverse engineering, disproportionate of scientific outputs to outcomes
6	Revision and monitoring of the map	Necessity of fact-based revision, lack of the road map, imperfect monitoring, monitoring the map, supervising the method to achieve the goals, don’t publishing of monitoring results
7	Finance	Lack of financial annexure, don’t allocating enough and approved the budget, financial dependence of research centers, limited grants, lack of activity-based costing, insufficient investment for the export of knowledge-based products, weakness in intellectual property of patents
8	Human resources	Disproportional distribution of scientific activities of the professors, less attention to training peers, motivational incuriosity of professors and physicians, weakness of education, knowledge deficiency of managers and non-professional management, teamwork weakness, undetermined researcher’s career, high number of young researchers
9	Focus on quality	Faculty promotion regulation, inattention to the qualitative indexes, poor quality of doctoral education, undefined requirements of scientific and technological products, poor quality of patent registration, a smaller amount of qualitative monitoring of research centers, unbalanced quality assessment
10	Infrastructure	Low scientific productivity, weakness in sustainability and competitiveness, lack of integration of facilities, undefined research line for research centers, the unsuitable situation of private r and d, low legal transparency, a smaller amount of society-based research priorities
11	Research ethics	The occurrence of unethical issues, fraud and producing pseudoscience, weakness in supervision of research ethics, unethical role modeling
12	Communication	International politics, export sanctions, economic decay and insecurity, little international communication of research centers, unemployment of graduates, dissociation in industry-university relationship