Background and Objectives: The researchers and their researches need to be evaluated to recognize each one's strengths and weaknesses. Then, it is possible to invest and make scientific policy on long term goals as well as short term goals in this field. So far, several indices have been presented for evaluating researchers, each of which merely emphasizes a particular aspect of evaluation, and each has its own deficiencies. Recently, a model has been proposed by Cuellar et al. (2016), titled "Scholarly capital model", which examines the various aspects of the scholarly activities of a researcher. They define the model of scholarly influence (scholarly capital model) as "the ability of a researcher to include his thoughts in the works of other researchers" or "the extent to which a researcher influences his own research field." They proposed three variables of social influence, intellectual influence and venue influence to evaluate the research. The purpose of this research is to evaluate the researches related to the field of distance education indexed on the Web of Science database using the scholarly capital model.
Methodology: The present study is an applied study that has been conducted by researchers in the field of distance education studies based on the model of scholarly capital model through using existing approaches in the field of scientometrics and social network analysis. The data needed for research is extracted from the Web of Science database. The research population consists all the documents published in the field of distance education. The results of search strategy retrieved 31607 records from 1985 to 2016. By Using the Bibexcel software the data was synchronized. The co-authorship symmetric matrices, was extracted. Subsequently, using the UCINET software, the centrality indices were calculated. After analyzing all the indices by using Amos and Lisrel software, we examined and tested the research hypotheses and fitted the model. Also, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to check the normality of variables.
Findings: The results of the first research hypothesis test indicate the direct and significant effect of the social influence on the ideational influence, and the hypothesis confirmed according to the path coefficient, 0.95 and t-statistic 45.9 at the 0.05 level. The structural equation modeling indices were used to fit the research model. Accordingly, the indices were estimated as follows:
In the research model, K2 has degrees of freedom of 3.97 which is less than 5. Also, the root mean square error of the approximation is 0/032 and less than 0.08. Given that the incremental growth index, normed fit index, non-normed fit index and comparative fit index are higher than 0.90, then the model shows acceptable fit and also are confirmed. The results of the second hypothesis test show the direct and inevitable significant effect of the social influence on venue influence, and the hypothesis is confirmed with a path coefficient of 0.70 and a T-value of 27.12 at the 0.05 level. In order to fit the research model, the structural equation model is used to fit the indexes. Accordingly, the indices are estimated as follows:
In the research model, the K2 value has degrees of freedom of 92.4 and less than 5. Also, the root mean square error of the approximation was 0.016 and less than 0.08. Given that the incremental fitness index , normed fit index , non-normed fit index , and comparative fit index  are all higher than 0.90, so the model is acceptable and validated. The results of the third hypothesis test of research and structural relationships between the variables of the research model -using structural equation modeling- indicate the direct and inevitable significant effect of the venue influence on the ideational influence , with a path coefficient of 0.84 and a T-value of 5.93 at 0.05 level (because ((t)) is outside the range (1.96, -1.96). In order to fit the research model, the indices of the structural equation modeling were used. Accordingly, the indexes are estimated as follows: In the research model, the K2 value is 0.063 and less than 5. Also, the root mean square error of the approximation is 0.033 and less than 0.08. Given that the incremental growth index, normed fit index, non-normed fit index and comparative fit index are more than 0.90, then the model shows an acceptable fit and therefore is approved.
Discussion: Using the data from the field of distance education studies, the researchers tested the of scholarly capital model. The results of data analysis in this research confirm the scholarly capita model and shows that there is a significant relationship between the variables of this research. The existence of this relationship can be due to the fact that researchers with stronger social interactions can contribute better than other researchers and may increase the quality of the works. Also they are in a better position in terms of co-authorship and its indices. Furthermore, the direct and significant effect of social influence on intellectual influence was confirmed by using structural equation modeling: social influence has a positive and significant effect on the ideational influence. The existence of such a relationship can be explained by the fact that researchers who have stronger social interactions can contribute better with other researchers and consequently may increase the quality of the works; hence, they are in a better position in terms of co-authorship and its indices. The results of structural modeling test also showed that there is a significant relationship between social influence indices and venue influence indices. In other words, higher researchers with higher social influence have better venue influence. The confirmation of the hypothesis between the variables of social influence and the venue influence is also largely justifiable, since a significant portion of the validity of each journal comes from scholars who send their research papers to those magazines, and if the quality of these studies is rich and appropriate, it absorbs citations and thus increases the credibility of the magazine. In general, it can be stated that the relationship between researchers and journals is bilateral and reciprocal; each one may add each other's credibility.