The purpose of the present study is to identify the characteristic of scientific talents in the Iranian higher education system from the viewpoint of scientific activists. Exploring the mental word and the experiences of individuals and extracting their attitudes requires the application of quality methods and one of the qualitative methods appropriate for the purpose and the question of the present study is the Grounded Theory, which is used in the present research. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. By conducting interviews with 20 scientific talents and after reaching theoretical saturation, the data were collected and analyzed. The collected data was organized in the form of 400 initial codes, 203 concepts, 4 subcategories, and 2 main categories, after the process of open coding. The final result of the analysis of the collected data was presented in the form of a preliminary grounded theory entitled "The theory of talent attributes in Iran's higher education system". The aforementioned theory seeks to illustrate the set of talent features according to the academic environment. According to this theory, academic talent in the academic system have a set of abilities (inherent and developable) and affective (motivation and interests). The present findings reveal the characteristics of talent in the Iranian public university system and can be used as an indicator for higher education practitioner to better understand and evaluate more effectively the attraction, development, and retention of scientific talents.
