La Tunisie Medicale: bibliometric analysis of the articles cites 10 times or more in the Scopus database

Abstract

Introduction. La Tunisie Medicale (Tunis Med)  had a deep impact in nearly 100 years of publishing. A bibliometric study, which uses citation analyses to appraise the influence of articles, can be used to detect the most impactful articles in the Tunis Med’s history. Objective. To identify and characterize the profile of the top-cited articles (≥10 times in Scopus) published in Tunis Med since 1949. Method. Scopus database was used to classify, according to the frequency of citation, the articles published in Tunis Med from 1949 through 2019. Only articles cited ≥10 times were included in the analysis. Articles were evaluated for several characteristics including number of citations (in absolute) of annual citations, year of publication, article type, language of publication, country of origin and specialty of the first author. Results. Among the 7555 articles classified in Scopus, only 105 (1.39%) were cited ≥10 times. The means±standard deviations of citations and annual citations were low, at 15.4±7.3 and 1.202±0.612, respectively. The profile of the most cited articles was an original article (92.38%), written in French (63.81%) and published between 2002 and 2011 (66.7%) by a first author specialist in community medicine (11.43%) or pediatrics (10.48%) who is affiliated to a research structure based in Tunisia (97.1%). Conclusion. This bibliometric analysis provides an overview of the Tunis Med publications that have shaped the scope and practice of medicine.