Turkish Publications in Science Citation Index and Citation Index-Expanded Indexed Journals in the Field of Toxicology: A Bibliographic Analysis

Copyright 2019 Haydarpaşa Numune Medical Journal OPEN ACCESS This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). 143 Büyükçoban et al., Bibliographic Analysis in Toxicology / doi: 10.14744/hnhj.2018. 47965 of references to publications [1]. In recent years, there has been an increase in bibliographic publications in the literature [3]. In the light of these bibliographic studies, the number of articles sent from clinics of anesthesia in Turkey and published in valuable high-impact international journals have tended to decrease within the last 10 years. The average number of citations is below the world average [2]. In a report prepared in 2009 by the scientists under the supervision of Higher Education Council (YÖK) where scientific indicators of Turkey were analyzed, the relative citation impact of Turkey is determined to be below the world average in all areas [4]. In our literature review, it has been indicated that bibliographic analyses of publications from our country have been performed in many branches, while studies analyzing publications on one of the most comprehensive disciplines namely toxicology sent from Turkey have not been conducted yet. This study aimed to quantitatively and qualitatively assess articles coming from Turkey and published in toxicology journals included in the lists of Science Citation Index (SCI) and SCI Expanded (SCIE) and compare the relevant data with the international data. Materials and Methods Our study was designed as a retrospective observational study. The study was started after obtaining the approval from Dokuz Eylül University Ethics Committee on Noninvasive Investigations (decision no. 2017/20-05). The term toxicology was selected from the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database and in journals included in SCIE. The list of journals in the SCIE index and their ISSN numbers were obtained. The IS=ISSN number was printed in the advanced mode of the search engine of Web of Science (WoS) of Scientific Information (ISI) all issues of the journal were determined. The “IS=ISSN number of AND CU= Turkey" were recorded, and all articles on toxicology sent from Turkey were determined (on 30.15.2017). We applied the same procedure in the PubMed database, and performed double check. Articles prepared by Turkish and non-Turkish authors in collaboration were included in the study if the responsible author of the article was residing in Turkey. Catalog information, duration of publication, number of issues, the number of publications from Turkey, proportion (%) of all articles from Turkey in all issues of the relevant journal using impact factors, and average annual rate of Turkey-based publications were determined. Acceptance Rate (%) of Turkey-based Publications The number of Turkey-based publications in a journal multiplied by 100 and divided by the total number of publications of the same journal indicates acceptance rate of Turkey-based publications. Average Rate of Annual Publications from Turkey The number of Turkey-based publications in a journal divided by the duration of its publication counted from the first year of its release as specified in the catalog information of the journal yields annual mean number of publications. It demonstrates the number of Turkey-based articles published in this journal. It is defined as the annual mean publication rate of Turkey-based articles in this journal. In the second phase of the study, the word “SU=toxicology” was entered in the advanced mode, in the WoS search engine of ISI, and all publications indexed in the field of toxicology were accessed. By typing “Analyze Results”, the distribution of all publications according to countries, years, fields of publication, and topics was determined and listed. We determined the distribution of topics by taking into account all topics of articles published from 1975 on, and also within the last decade. Then, the words “SU=toxicology AND CU=country name” was entered in the advanced mode of the WoS search engine of ISI, and typing “Citation Report” all h-index values of all countries were determined. In addition, by typing “SU=toxicology AND CU=Turkey” “Analyze Results” only the publications of our country were determined and listed according to years and subjects. The primary endpoint of this study was to determine acceptance rate of Turkey-based publications by journals in the field of toxicology included in the SCI/SCIE index and the annual mean publication rate, while the secondary endpoint was to compare the number of citations received by Turkey-based publications, and their h-indices with those of the other countries. Statistical Analysis The data of the study were analyzed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences15.0 (SPSS Inc; Chicago, IL, USA) package program For statistical evaluation of the publication rates [5] of the journals grouped by different criteria and Turkey-based publications and their annual mean publication rates, the Mann–Whitney U test was used. The correlations between impact factors of the journals, publication rates of Turkey-based journals, and their average annual publication rates were analyzed by Pearson correlation test. p value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. 144 Büyükçoban et al., Bibliographic Analysis in Toxicology / doi: 10.14744/hnhj.2018. 47965