Analysis of Macedonian Medical Scientific Papers in the Scopus Database

Aim: The aim of this study was to analyze medical scientific papers in the Republic of Macedonia indexed in the Scopus database.Material and Methods: A search of the Scopus database was performed on February 23, 2013 in order to identify published papers from the field of medical sciences affiliated with the country Macedonia. A total number of 967 articles were selected for analysis and h-index was calculated from these documents.Results: The papers were published in a total of 160 journals. The largest number of papers has been published in domestic journals. Two scientists are top two with 59-65 published papers, the next group of eight scientists have published 25-44 papers, and the rest of the authors have published less than 25 papers, each. The published papers have been cited 4380 times (mean citation of 4.5 per paper) with the Hirsh index (h-index) of 27. Conclusion: An important factor for increasing the quality of the Macedonian medical journals is validation of the published papers in the journals indexed in the Scopus database by the Scientific Board of the Medical Faculty, which is associated with submission and/or defence of PhD theses. Such policy would trigger Editorial Boards of the Macedonian medical journals to improve the quality of their journals and include them in the Scopus database.