Tolga AKBEN, Tuğba YILMAZ
Ankara Medical Journal - 2026;26(2):245-263
Objectives: This study evaluated family medicine research in Türkiye by analyzing publication productivity, thematic patterns, journal distribution, collaboration structure, citation indicators, and the effect of metadata standardization on bibliometric interpretation. Materials and Methods: PubMed and Web of Science (WoS) were searched for articles and reviews published between 2013 and 2023 using affiliation- and address-based strategies. Records were eligible when at least one Türkiye-based author affiliation clearly indicated family medicine. After screening and de-duplication, 2265 publications were analyzed with VOSviewer and Bibliometrix. Institutional names, source titles, author keywords, and cautiously identifiable author-name variants were harmonized through VOSviewer thesaurus files and Bibliometrix-compatible CSV files. Publication output, journal distribution, WoS categories, collaboration networks, citation indicators, and keyword trends were examined. Results: The dataset comprised 2265 articles by 6843 authors, published in 735 journals and linked to 4491 author keywords and 1625 institutions. These publications received 13196 citations and cited 56121 references. Only 13 journals were specific to family medicine. Medicine, General & Internal accounted for 899 publications (39.69%), whereas Primary Health Care accounted for 62 (2.73%). COVID-19 (161), obesity (130), and type 2 diabetes mellitus (122) were the leading author-keyword themes. Conclusion: Family medicine research in Türkiye showed a broad, multidisciplinary profile and was published largely outside field-specific journals. The findings also indicate that inconsistent institutional, source, keyword, and author metadata can fragment bibliometric maps and obscure the field's visibility within primary care research.
