Contribution of Countries to Main Neurosurgical Journals with Particular Emphasis on Turkey

To quantitatively analyze the contribution of different countries to neurosurgical journals, with emphasis on Turkey. Further, we discuss the factors affecting research productivity and strategies for improvement.

Neurosurgical journals were selected from the Journal Citation Reports database using given criteria. Data were collected from the Web of Science database to analyze the contribution rates of countries to neurosurgical journals in terms of publication numbers and average citations per item from September to December 2018. The article types, departmental contributions, and most cited articles were evaluated particularly for Turkey.

Fourteen of 52 journals were chosen for analysis. There were 82,626 articles published from 2000 to 2018. The top three contributors included the USA with 28,939 (35%), Japan with 6,382 (7.7%), and Germany with 4,454 articles (5.3%). Turkey contributed 2,087 articles (2.5%) to neurosurgical journals, including 1003 (48%) original articles and 742 (36%) case reports, and ranked 10th in the world. Hacettepe University is the only organization in Turkey that ranked in the top 10 in all categories. Among the top-cited articles from Turkey, the majority were retrospective studies (39%), followed by laboratory studies (18%) and prospective studies (15%).

This bibliometric assessment of neurosurgical journals allows countries to perceive their neurosurgical research productivity. It can function as a benchmark for academic productivity and the methodology can be a model for particular analysis of other countries.