Journal of Medical Library and Information Science

Introduction: The digital divide in higher education affects both access to technology and its effective use. This study examined the digital divide among faculty members at Golestan University of Medical Sciences and explored the relationships among ICT literacy, practical skills, and teaching/research requirements.

 Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in 2024 among 95 faculty members selected from a total of 333 via convenience sampling. Data were collected using a validated questionnaire comprising five sections: demographic information; access to and use of information and communication technology (ICT); ICT literacy; practical abilities and skills in using ICTs; and educational and research requirements. Descriptive statistics, the Shapiro-Wilk test for normality, Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests for group comparisons, and Spearman’s correlation for relationships between ICT dimensions were applied using SPSS.

 Results: Indicators of ICT access showed no substantial access-based digital divide: 94.7% of participants reported high-speed internet access at home, 89.5% used ICTs several times per day, and 65.3% reported more than three hours of daily ICT use. However, mean scores for ICT literacy (22.58 ± 5.36 out of 32), practical ICT skills (109.39 ± 27.34 out of 160), and educational and research requirements (28.55 ± 8.33 out of 36) indicated moderate competency levels. Faculty members from clinically oriented schools, particularly Medicine and Dentistry, consistently obtained lower mean scores across these dimensions. Strong and statistically significant correlations were observed between ICT literacy and practical skills (r = 0.605, p < 0.001) and between practical skills and educational and research requirements (r = 0.653, p < 0.001).

 Conclusion: At Golestan University of Medical Sciences, while ICT access is largely achieved, skill-based challenges remain, particularly in clinically oriented faculties. The interconnection among ICT literacy, practical skills, and teaching/research requirements indicates that the observed digital divide is primarily skills- and outcome-based rather than access-related, and that improvements in one dimension can support gains in others.

Introduction: The relationship between religion and health has attracted increasing scholarly attention, especially regarding Islam and Christianity as the world’s two largest religions. This study aimed to compare health-related scientific publications on Islam and Christianity indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) using a scientometric approach.

Methods: This descriptive quantitative study employed scientometric analysis and co-authorship network mapping. Bibliographic data were retrieved from the WoS Core Collection on May 20, 2022, using search strategies based on key religion-related terms (e.g., Islam, Muslim, Quran; Christianity, Christian, Bible) combined with health- and medicine-related keywords. After screening titles and abstracts to remove irrelevant records, the remaining data were exported in TXT format and analyzed using EndNote, Microsoft Excel, and VOSviewer. Publication trends, citation patterns, prolific countries, organizations, journals, authors, and keyword and co-authorship networks were examined.

Results: A total of 3,747 Islam-related and 2,756 Christianity-related health publications were included. Pakistan, the USA, and Iran were the leading producers of Islam-related publications, while the USA, England, and India were most productive for Christianity. The Journal of the Pakistan Medical Association was the most prolific journal for Islam, and Mental Health, Religion & Culture ranked first for Christianity. Co-authorship networks showed broader international collaboration in Christianity-related research, while collaboration in Islam-related publications was more concentrated. Despite growth in publication output in both Islam- and Christianity-related health research, citation impact did not increase proportionally in either domain.

Conclusion: Health-related publications on Islam and Christianity have grown across the past decade; however, their citation impact remains limited. Strengthening research quality, visibility, and international collaboration may enhance the overall contribution of religion-and-health scholarship.