Abstract :
Aim: To assess quantitatively the cumulative and genuine contribution of Turkish universities to science in the main fields over the past 30 years.Materials and methods: In the Citation Reports section of the Web of Science, over 70 main scientific institutions were searched; and publications that received 60 or more citations by May 2010 were selected. Papers having more than a minor share by international authors were excluded.Results: Only 47 universities and 6 institutions generated articles that were cited ≥60 times. These publications, numbering 541, received a total of 51.215 citations. Eight universities (İstanbul University, İstanbul Technical University, Hacettepe University, Bilkent University, Middle-East Technical University, Boğaziçi University, Ankara University, and Ege University) acquired 62% of these citations. Primary authors were 335 individuals among whom 121 generated 70% of these citations. It is estimated that Turkish scientists produce about 1 per mil of the global scientific output, which indicates that about 40 such papers are produced annually in Turkey. A substantial variance was recorded across major universities in terms of the ratio of citations to highly-cited papers to the total citations. Engineering and geology had higher relative contributions, followed by agricultural sciences, ecology, pharmacy, chemistry and medicine, while physics, mathematics, and biology had less contributions.Conclusion: Along with research in general, research potentially to contribute to science needs specifically to be supported with a coherence, milieu creation and consistent long-term policy.
