[Quantitative and qualitative analysis of four national otorhinolaryngology journals between 2002 and 2010]

This study aims to perform a quantitative and qualitative analysis of four national peer-reviewed otorhinolaryngology journals between 2002 and 2010 and compare various parameters in 1990-1994 period.

The number of authors and female authors, gender of first author, city and the institution where the article was submitted, number of references and national references were noted separately for each article in all issues of four national peer-reviewed journals in years 2002, 2005 and 2010. Language of articles was noted and they were grouped under six main headings based on their subjects. Quantitative analysis was performed considering evidence-based medicine principle and evidence levels of articles were noted between 1 and 5. Statistical analysis was performed using Pearson chi-square and one-way ANOVA tests.

A total of 424 articles including 143 in 2002, 147 in 2005 and 134 in 2010 in four national otorhinolaryngology journals were evaluated. The number of authors per article was found to be 4.49, indicating no statistically significant difference between the years (p>0.05). The mean number of female authors per article was 0.85. When the institutions submitted articles were assessed, number of publications from university hospitals was higher than the education hospitals and other health care services; however, this difference was reduced in 2010. In the evaluation of cited references, the mean number of references and national references per article increased from 16.90 to 18.12 and from 1.54 to 1.68 in 2002 and 2010, respectively. According to the articles categorized to their main subjects, it was found that most of the publications were related to upper respiratory/digestive tract and neck and the least was related to facial plastic surgery. The qualitative analysis in terms of evidence-based medicine revealed no articles with level 1 evidence through three years studied.

It will be useful to make similar periodical studies to improve the quality of otorhinolaryngology journals and related articles in Turkey.