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A dissertation is a scientific document reflecting qualifications of a medical doctor who is to become specialized in making specific research studies and analyses in his discipline and drawing scientific conclusions from analyses. The Regulation on Medical Specialization in Turkey requires that all candidates prepare and submit medical dissertations at the completion of their medical residency. However, the rate of dissertations published in a scientific journal is not high in our country (1, 2). In this study, we aimed to investigate the publishing rates of general surgery dissertations in journals and the total number of citations.
Material and Methods
All medical dissertations that have been prepared in general surgery departments of university hospitals and presented between the years 2006 and 2008 were analyzed within the scope of the study. Dissertations were identified by searching the Electronic Archive of Higher Education Council Dissertation Center (http://tez.yok.gov.tr/UlusalTezMerkezi/) database. Data regarding the subject and type of research, as well as the university hospital name were recorded.
Afterwards, the dissertations were sought in different databases, i.e. PubMed, Thomson Reuters Web of Science, Google Scholar database, and Turkmedline website (www.turkmedline.net) through which many international journals can be reached, by the author names to check whether they had been published in a journal or not. In case of publication; if the journal was included in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), the date when the article was published, the first author, the person who made the article publicly available, and the number of citations to the related article were evaluated from Thomson Reuters Web of Science. Citations were assessed by publication date, and the number of citations per year was determined.
This study was performed in accordance with the ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki.
Statistical Analysis
Study data was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS Inc; Chicago, IL, USA) 16.0. Categorical values were analyzed by Chi-square test and non-parametric values were analyzed by Mann-Whitney U test. p value below <0.05 was considered as statistically significant.
Results
Two hundred and thirty-two dissertations were completed between 2006 and 2008. 116 (50%) of those dissertations were animal studies while the other 116 (50%) were clinical studies. Of all the clinical studies, 19 (8.2%) were randomized prospective clinical studies, 10 (4.3%)...