IMPACT OF TURKISH GENERAL SURGERY-RELATED ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN THE SCIENCE CITATION INDEX-EXPANDED TO THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY

Abstract

The number of scientific papers from Turkey that were published in the foreign scientific journals has dramatically increased in recent years. However it is not clear whether a similar trend has occurred in the citation rates of these papers. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the impact of Turkish general surgery-related articles published in the Science Citation Index-Expanded to the international scientific community. Articles published between 1954 an 2001 in 144 surgery journals included in the Science Citation Index-Expanded were evaluated using "Web of Science". General surgery-unrelated papers, editorials, letter to the editors, abstracts and expanded abstracts were excluded from the study. Number of papers published per year, citation rates, number of citation per article and rates of citations were studied. Out of total 522 articles, 262 were clinical and 167 were experimental original papers. There were 86 case reports, while only 4 review articles and 3 multicentric prospective studies were found. Before 1990, there were maximum 7 papers/year. After 1990, a significant increase in the annual number of articles was observed and more than 50 papers/year were published after 1998. There were totally 1484 citations. Mean and median number of citations per paper was 2.84 and 1, respectively. Forty-three percent of the articles received no citation and 148 papers received only one or two citations. Seventy-seven percent of total citations were from foreign scientific community. From national citations, 34.4% were self-citations. We conclude that although there was a significant increase in the number of articles published in the surgery journals included in the Science Citation Index - Expanded, there was no concomitant increase in the citation rates.