Representation of South Asian countries in five high-impact anesthesia journals

The South Asian region is comprised of eight countries, i.e., Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and Maldives. There is dearth of literature documenting anesthesia research in this region.

The aim of this audit was to look at research productivity in the region by examining the volume and the type of anesthesia publication in five high-index anesthesia journals.

The study design was a survey of literature in the top five high-impact anesthesiology journals carried out at a tertiary care hospital.

The journal citation report 2016 was accessed to identify the top five anesthesia journals based on their impact factor. We identified articles published in these journals between January 2000 and December 2015.

Microsoft Excel 2003 worksheet was used for data collection from extracted articles.

The highest number of publications came from India (n = 487) 95.9%; 58.5% of these were correspondence, 21% were original articles, 12.8% were case reports and case series, 1.2% reviews, and 1% editorials. Fourteen articles were published from Pakistan, with 1.2% original articles, 0.8% letter to editor, 0.6% audits, and 0.2% case reports. Nepal and Sri Lanka contributed seven publications. There were no publications in these journals from authors from Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Bhutan, and Maldives in the reviewed journals. The highest number of publications was equally distributed between two journals, i.e., "Anesthesia and Analgesia" (29.5%) and "Anesthesia" (28.9%).

We found that scientific contributions from the South Asian region in terms of original anesthesiology research in five high index anesthesiology journals was suboptimal and has not shown an increasing trend over the last 16 years.