An analysis of publications related to emergency medicine originating from Turkey

Objective. Aim of this study was to examine the publications of the Turkish emergency medicine clinics in the journals indexed in Index Medicus between January 1st, 1994 and December 31st, 2013 thus, to demonstrate the level of scientific productivity within the 2 decades after the establishment of emergency medicine as a specialty. 
Method. A pubmed search was performed using “emergency medicine” and “Turkey” entries in the affiliation part and covering the dates January 1 1994 to December 31 2013. Further search was performed in the ISI web of knowledge website to find out whether the journals were indexed in SCI or SCI-Expanded lists. Number of citations were found by using Google Scholar. Publications with a first name from clinics other than emergency medicine was not included in the study. Results. 719 articles were published in 204 journals within the 20 years. 86% of the articles were originated from university hospitals. 10.6% from research and education hospitals and 3.5% from second level hospitals (state and private). 38.1% of the articles were prospective clinical studies, 16.8% were retrospective clinical studies, 9.2% were experimental animal studies and 7% were review articles. Studies were commonly published in Turkish Journal of Trauma and Emergency Surgery (n=85, 11.8%), American Journal of Emergency Medicine (n=85, 11.8%), and Emergency Medicine Journal (n=85, 11.8%). Mean number of articles published annually was 35.9 articles/year. Akdeniz University published 7.5% of the articles, Dokuz Eylul University published 7.2% and Karadeniz Technical University 4.9% of the articles. 
Conclusion. Number of publications in the field emergency medicine from our country are increasing with time. Studies analyzing the quality of the publications will be guiding for the researchers.