Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb.25 / Trend F.Mehdi/
Foreign companies can establish branches in Iranian science and technology parks, the Mehr News Agency quoted the Iranian president's science and technology deputy, Nasrin Soltankhah, as saying.
She made the announcement during an international exhibition on advanced technologies in Tehran, adding that high-tech companies from Russia, Belarus and Ukraine attended the exhibition.
She referred to sanctions as a means for the country to showcase its capabilities saying that Iran has made significant progress in technological fields.
On January 18, IRNA quoted President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying Science production in Iran is growing at a fast pace, so that science production has grown by seven times during the past seven years.
In the Iranian year 1384 (ended in March 2006), Iran had a share of 0.3 per cent in science production in the world, he said adding that the figure is currently around three per cent, showing a seven-fold growth.
The Islamic Republic of Iran ranked 17th in terms of science production in 2012, according to the latest statistics which were released by the Scopus database.
According to the statistics, Iran produced 34,155 articles in 2012, which gained the country the world's 17th rank in science production and fixed its top position in the region above Turkey, Press TV reported.
Abolfazl Rezaei, head of the Iranian Health Ministry's Centre for Information Development and Coordination and Scientific Publications, said Switzerland and Turkey stood after Iran at the ranks of 18th and 19th with the production of 33,118 and 30,296 articles in 2012 respectively.
Rezaei added that Iran's scientific progress over the past few years was the result of the country's recent policies and programmes to develop knowledge and facilitate researchers' access to the world's top academic resources.
According to the statistics published in the journal Nature, Iran ranked first in scientific growth in the world in 2011.
In 2000, the Islamic Republic ranked 53rd in the world in terms of highly cited medical articles, but improved to the 23rd rank in 2011.
According to the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), Iranian researchers and scientists published a total of 60,979 scientific articles in major international journals from 1999 to 2008.