Ten Years of Publications: Scientometric Comparison of Major Neurosurgical Journals

The goal of this study was to examine neurosurgical scientific publications and change in the trends in major neurosurgical journals during the last 10 years.

The peer-reviewed articles published in 12 prominent neurosurgical journals over the last 10 years were analyzed. The journals were grouped into 2 groups based on the number of articles published in a journal in a year (≥500 or <500).

The total number of peer-reviewed articles published in 10 years in these 12 journals was 48,957. The number of peer-reviewed articles published in a year increased from 3441 to 7316 over this time. The maximum number of peer-reviewed articles were published in 2019 in Group A (n = 7170) and in 2018 in Group B journals (n = 615). The commonest article types were Original Articles and Case Reports in both the groups, but the proportion of Original Articles published was greater in Group A journals (54.0%) as compared with Group B journals (44.5%). Review Articles were more commonly published in Group B journals. The proportion of articles published in Group A and B journals from the United States was 48.0% and 31.7%, respectively, whereas the proportion of articles from Europe was 21.4% and 36.2%, respectively.

Neurosurgical publications are continuously increasing, with a parallel growth in the number of authors and citations all over the world. There are significant differences in the scientometric indices of major neurosurgical journals based on their yearly articles published.