Research Production of Current Saudi Emergency Medicine Training Centers in the New Millennium: A Descriptive Study

Abstract

The development of the specialty of emergency medicine demands a concurrent development of research in the field; training emergency departments are expected to take the lead in research production. This study aims to evaluate the research production of 14 Saudi Emergency Medicine training departments, from January 2000 to June 2016. From April to July 2016, we searched for articles published by first authors affiliated with Saudi Emergency Medicine training centers. We searched for original articles using the following search engines: PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, Ovid, Scopus, Inspec, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and Cochrane Central Registers. Based on previous literature, we used certain metrics to evaluate the articles: journal’s impact factor, number of citations by Web of Science, number of citations by Google Scholar, and Altmetric score. Out of 9520 publications screened, only 76 articles were included for evaluation. The average number of publications per year was 4.7. However, it increased from two publications in year 2000 to 14 publications in 2015. Most of the publications (n = 65, 86%) were in journals with no or low IF (IF < 2). Although, there is progressive improvement in the quantity and quality of research from Saudi Emergency Medicine training departments, there should be more eff ort to reach to a higher level of research production.