Turkey's Evaluation in Kidney Transplantation Research

Abstract

Objectives: The objective this study is to evaluate the trend of Turkey’s contribution in terms of number of publications included in the Science Citation Index Expanded in kidney transplantation between 1980 and 2009.

Materials and Methods: All scientific papers published included in Science Citation Index Expanded in the English language between 1980 and 2009 were analyzed using the “Web of Science.” A general search was conducted using key words of “kidney transplantation,” “renal transplantation,” “kidney transplant,” and “renal transplant.” We analyzed these results using the “analyze” function of the software in terms of countries, documentation types, number in years of publications, journals, and institutes. We also used the same function separately analyze papers from Turkey in last 3 decades between 1980 and 1989, 1990 and 1999, and 2000 and 2009 for statistical evaluation.

Results: In total, we found 46 983 papers related to kidney transplant were published included in the Science Citation Index Expanded in the English language between 1980 and 2009. Overall, 964 of those papers were from Turkey (2.05%). There were 12 papers from Turkey between 1980 and 1989, 200 papers between 1990 and 1999, and 752 papers between 2000 and 2009. The rank of Turkey among other countries, ranked by the number of papers published, was 33 between 1980 and 1989 and 11 between 2000 and 2009.

Conclusions: Turkey has shown a significant positive trend in publishing papers in the field of kidney transplantation—further evidence of the progress Turkey has made in its contributions to the field of kidney transplantation in recent decades.