Turkish Contribution to Ophthalmic Literature From 1990 to 2013

Abstract

Objectives: To investigate the frequency and distribution of ophthalmic articles with Turkish origin on Pubmed search engine and to compare these data with those of the world's leading countries in that field. Materials and Methods: Using the words ophthalmology and Turkey, an online retrospective search was conducted on Pubmed for the period from 1990 to 2013. Additionally, same search was performed for each ophthalmic journal indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E)(n=56) and not indexed in SCI-E (n=8), separately. The articles were divided into two groups (research articles and the other articles as case reports, letters, correspondence, editorials and reviews). Results: A total of 5044 articles in the area of ophthalmology were from Turkey in that period. The United States of America, Japan, and Germany had the maximum number of published articles (25%, 6.8%, and 4.9% of all, respectively). There were 3334 articles on ophthalmic journals. 2822 articles were published in SCI-E journals and of those, 2321 were research articles and 501 were other types of articles. Three SCI-E indexed ophthalmic journals which mostly published Turkish articles are the European Journal of Ophthalmology, Journal of Cataract and Refractive Surgery, and the Ophthalmologica (361, 183, and 152, respectively). Conclusion: In this period, the rate of the published ophthalmic articles originated from Turkey was 1.5%. We observed that the number of Turkish ophthalmic articles has been increasing gradually.