Methodological and Thematic Trends in Emergency Medicine Research: A Comparative Bibliometric Analysis of TR Dizin and Web of Science Databases, 2020–2025

This bibliometric analysis compared the study design distribution and topic area profile of emergency medicine publications indexed in TR Dizin and the Web of Science between 2020 and 2025. All articles and reviews published in TR Dizin emergency medicine category journals and in the Web of Science Core Collection (SCI-EXPANDED and ESCI) emergency medicine category between 2020 and 2025 were screened. Study design and topic area were manually classified by two emergency medicine specialists; inter-rater reliability was established on a pilot sample of 200 randomly selected articles (Cohen κ = 0.92). Distributional differences were assessed with chi-square test and Cramér's V; temporal trends were evaluated with Mann-Kendall trend test, with Benjamini-Hochberg false discovery rate (FDR) correction applied for multiple comparisons. A total of 21,710 publications were included (TR Dizin: n=2,390; WoS: n=19,320). Retrospective cohort studies were the most frequent design in both corpora (TR Dizin: 48.2%; WoS: 34.3%). Randomized controlled trials accounted for 2.1% of TR Dizin and 4.7% of WoS publications. Study design (χ²=479.18, p<0.001, Cramér's V=0.149) and topic area (χ²=328.08, p<0.001, Cramér's V=0.123) distributions differed significantly between the two corpora. Trauma and toxicology were proportionally more prevalent in TR Dizin; resuscitation and cardiac emergency were more prominent in WoS. Monotonic temporal tendencies were observed — an increasing proportion of retrospective studies and declining case reports in TR Dizin, and declining prospective designs and case-level evidence in WoS — but none reached statistical significance after Benjamini-Hochberg false discovery rate correction. Observational designs predominate in TR Dizin emergency medicine publications, with randomized controlled trials and reviews remaining proportionally limited compared with the international literature. These findings provide a baseline for identifying priority areas for strengthening national emergency medicine research capacity.