Yıldız KAYALI
Türkiye Aile Hekimliği Dergisi - 2026;30(2):129-138
Objective: Primary healthcare is a fundamental component of robust health systems and plays a key role in advancing universal health coverage (UHC) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Family physicians and other primary care doctors require current and trustworthy evidence and therefore depend on systematic reviews of the literature. Although the number of primary healthcare-related papers has grown, information on the overall characteristics of this body of work remains limited. Bibliometric analysis combined with visualization techniques is a useful approach for mapping research trends and identifying gaps in knowledge. This study aimed to examine primary health care publications indexed in WoS that had at least one author affiliation in Türkiye (2015-2024) and to describe Türkiye's contribution in the global context. Methods: Scientific documents indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) under the category "Primary Health Care" and affiliated with Türkiye were retrieved for the years 2015-2024. Descriptive quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried out using standard bibliometric indicators, including publication counts, language of publication, institutional affiliations, most cited articles, authors, and journals. VOSviewer software was employed to generate a keyword co-occurrence network in order to explore research themes and their interrelations. Results: There were 267 scientific publications produced from Türkiye between 2015 and 2024. The highest number of studies was conducted in 2023 (n: 49, 18.35%). All of the publications were in the English language, 22.47% were published in the Primary Care Diabetes, and most publications were in article form (n: 227, 85.02%). "Primary care" was the most frequently used word in the map created with the network analysis of the keywords. Conclusion: The literature review has shown that our study is the first bibliometric study presenting publications related to primary health care from Türkiye. Overall, Türkiye's contribution to the global PHC literature remains limited. Strengthening research capacity through targeted funding, multicenter collaborations, and diversified study designs is essential to increase both the volume and impact of PHC research from Türkiye.
