From the Editor

Abstract

Getting indexed on international (e.g. PubMed, Science Citation Index [SCI], Scopus, Index Copernicus) or national (e.g. Turkish Medical Index) databases is one of the important prerequisites for the recognition and preferability of scientific journals. Some of these databases (e.g. PubMed, Turkish Medical Index) list only the articles published in a journal, while others (e.g. SCI, Scopus, Google Scholar) also track the citations received by a published article. The SCI and Scopus databases evaluate and sort the journals based on the citations they have received. The ‘impact factor’ data used by the SCI is the oldest and most common bibliographical parameter. The impact factor of a journal in any given year (for example for 2016) is the number of citations received in that year (2016) by the articles published in that journal during the two preceding years (2014 and 2015), divided by the total number of articles published in that journal during the same two preceding years. Calculating the impact factor over a period of five years, instead of two, and excluding self-citations from this calculation are some of the attempts to increase the accuracy of the impact factor. Relatively new databases such as Scopus try to provide more precise indicators of quality by taking the general citation rates of other journals of the same discipline into account. The number of articles published in the journal, availability of free access to the journal, presence of an archive, and even periodical publishing are used by some of the scoring systems. However, citation rate still remains as the most important factor.

If we are to take a look at the number of citations by the SCI, we see that AOTT has reached an impact factor of 0.5 in 2016. We are delighted to see that the impact factor of our journal once again shows an increasing trend. On behalf of all our readers, I would like to congratulate the authors of the following articles, who received four citations each and made a significant contribution to the impact factor of the journal in 2016.

Yusuf Gürbüz, Tahir Sadık Sügün, Kemal Özaksar. A bibliometric analysis of orthopedic publications originating from Turkey. Acta Orthop Traumatol Turc 2015;49(1):57-66.
Nadezda M. Petrovic, Dragan R. Milovanovic, Dragana Ignjatovic Ristic, Nicola Riznic, Branko Ristic, Zeljko Stepanovic. Factors associated with severe postoperative pain in patients with total hip arthroplasty. Acta Orthop Traumatol Turc 2014;48(6):615-622.
Hakan Boya, Özal Özcan, Çiğdem Tokyol. Osteochondroma of the talus: an unusual location. Acta Orthop Traumatol Turc 2014;48(2):236-239.
Eylem Binici Bedir, Tuhan Kurtulmuş, Selma Başyiğit, Uğur Bakır, Necdet Sağlam, Gürsel Saka. A comparison of epidural analgesia and local infiltration analgesia methods in pain control following total knee arthroplasty. Acta Orthop Traumatol Turc 2014;48(1): 73-79.
Levent Küçük, Burçin Keçeci, Dündar Sabah, Güven Yücetürk. Aggressive fibromatosis: evaluation of prognostic factors and outcomes of surgical treatment. Acta Orthop Traumatol Turc 2014; 48(1): 55-60.

I would like to extend my special thanks to the team of Mahir Mahiroğulları, Duygu Yaşar Şirin, Mehmet İşyar and İbrahim Yılmaz (Istanbul, Turkey) who cited three articles published in our journal in 2014 and 2015, and to the teams of Mahmut Nedim Doral and Gazi Huri (Ankara, Turkey), and Da Liu and Bo Zhang (Beijing, China) who cited two AOTT articles from 2014 and 2015 in their works published in 2016.

I kindly ask all our readers to once again review the articles published in our journal in preparation of their scientific works and presentations. You may access our archive of the last 50 years at www.aott.org.tr and run searches with keywords in both English and Turkish.

I wish all our colleagues success and happiness in 2017,

Prof. Dr. Önder Kılıçoğlu
AOTT Editor-in-Chief