Emergency medicine literature in the Web of Science category “emergency medicine”: A bibliometric analysis (1980–2024)
Ahmet Aykut
, Ertuğ Günsoy, Cem Yıldırım, Mehmet Veysel Öncül
Department of Emergency Medicine, SBU. Van Education and Research Hospital, Van, Türkiye
Keywords: Artificial intelligence, bibliometrics, emergency medicine, health services research, publications
Abstract
OBJECTIVES: The objective is to describe long term trends in emergency medicine (EM) research output from 1980 to 2024 and to map study designs, conceptual domains, and collaboration structures within the Web of Science (WoS) Category “EM.”
METHODS: We conducted a retrospective bibliometric analysis of records indexed in the WoS Core Collection from January 1, 1980, to December 31, 2024, using the WoS Categories filter “EM.” The search was performed on October 3, 2025. Only records with WoS document type “Article” were included. Bibliographic data, including publication year, journal, country, institutions, citations, and indexed keywords/metadata, were extracted. A rule based text mining algorithm classified study designs and conceptual domains and was internally validated against a manually reviewed sample of 240 records, showing 75.8% agreement (κ = 0.638) for study design and 86.3% agreement (κ = 0.828) for conceptual domain. Descriptive statistics and VOSviewer based co authorship, co citation, and keyword co occurrence analyses were performed.
RESULTS: Of 161,842 records initially identified, 102,561 articles met eligibility criteria. Annual EM publication counts increased after 2000. Health services and systems research and observational clinical studies predominated, whereas randomized controlled trials and qualitative or mixed methods studies remained uncommon. Trauma, resuscitation, cardiovascular emergencies, and sepsis were longstanding core domains, while digital health, artificial intelligence, point of care ultrasound, disaster medicine, and global EM gained prominence after 2010. Collaboration expanded over time, but multinational co authorship remained limited, and affiliations from low and middle income countries were underrepresented.
CONCLUSIONS: EM has evolved into a high‑volume, thematically diverse field, but its evidence
base remains predominantly observational and geographically imbalanced.
How to cite this article: Aykut A, Günsoy E, Yıldırım C, Öncül MV. Emergency medicine literature in the Web of Science category “emergency medicine”: A bibliometric analysis (1980–2024). Turk J Emerg Med 2026;26:330-9.