Family Medicine-affiliated Publications from Türkiye Indexed in PubMed and Web of Science: A Bibliometric Analysis

INTRODUCTION: The visibility of family medicine research may be influenced by publication channels, indexing categories, and inconsistently reported bibliographic metadata. This study evaluated the academic productivity, thematic profile, and bibliographic visibility of family medicine specialists in Türkiye, with particular emphasis on the role of standardized metadata.
METHODS: PubMed and Web of Science (WoS) were searched for articles published between 2013 and 2023 using affiliation- and address-based search strategies. Only articles and review articles were included. After screening and de-duplication, 2265 publications were analyzed using VOSviewer and Bibliometrix. Institutional names, sources, author keywords, and cautiously identifiable author-name variants were standardized using VOSviewer thesaurus files and Bibliometrix-compatible CSV files. Publication output, journal distribution, WoS categories, collaboration patterns, citation indicators, and keyword trends were examined. A sensitivity analysis was conducted for PubMed-only records excluded from the final network analysis.
RESULTS: The final dataset included 2265 articles by 6843 authors, published in 735 journals and associated with 4491 author keywords and 1625 institutions. These publications received 13196 citations and cited 56121 sources. Only 13 journals were specific to family medicine. In WoS categories, Medicine, General & Internal accounted for 899 publications (39.69%), whereas Primary Health Care accounted for 62 publications (2.73%). Obesity, COVID-19, and depression were prominent themes.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Family medicine research in Türkiye demonstrates a broad interdisciplinary publication profile. However, dispersed publication channels and persistent metadata inconsistencies may reduce its traceability as a distinct primary care research field.

Keywords: Türkiye, family medicine, family practice, primary health care, bibliometrics, metadata standardization.