Qualitative evaluation of publications on family medicine in Turkey

Background and Aim: The aim of this study was to make a qualitative evaluation of the publications published in national and international journals on family medicine in Turkey.Material and Methods: We evaluated the publications of candidates for academic promotion which were sent to the Cukurova University Faculty of Medicine Department of Family Medicine. We accessed the publications of faculty working in Departments of Family Medicine in other universities of Turkey via internet.Results: Ninety six percent of faculty who published these publications were working in the Department of Family Medicine in universities. The number of publications that could be reached from 1987 to 2008 was 916. Five hundred and tree (54.9%) were published in Turkish, 413 (45.1%) were published in English in 385 different journals. The majority of subjects was on other specialties (46.8%), the publications on principles of family medicine discipline were in the second rank (32.0%) and the publications on clinical practices of family medicine were in the third rank (19.8%). The majority (68.4%) of publications was original papers. The publications in Turkish were published most frequently in Turkish Journal of Family Medicine (10.3%) and the publications in English in Saudi Medical Journal (5.3%). The mean number of authors was 4,33±2,15 and the first author was from family medicine in 52.4% of the publications. The most preferred outpatient clinics were Internal Medicine (13.4%) and Family Medicine (9.1%) for the sample.Conclusions: Establishing a sound research base is important for the future of our discipline. Although family medicine is a developing specialty, publications in national and international journals are increasing however there is lot to do.