[Bibliographic survey of the Orvosi Hetilap of Hungary: looking back and moving forward].

Introduction: The first step in the process of acquisition of impact factor for a scientific journal is to get registered at Thomson Reuters Web of Science database.

Aim: The aim of this article is to evaluate the content and structure of Orvosi Hetilap with regards to selection criteria of Thomson Reuters, in particular to objectives of citation analysis.

Methods: Authors evaluated issues of Orvosi Hetilap published in 2011 and calculated the unofficial impact factor of the journal based on systematic search in various citation index databases. Number of citations, quality of citing journals and scientific output of the editorial board members were evaluated. Adherence to guidelines of international publishers was assessed, as well.

Results: Unofficial impact factor of Orvosi Hetilap has been continuously rising every year in the past decade (except for 2004 and 2010). The articles of Orvosi Hetilap are widely cited by international authors and high impact factor journals, too. Further, more than half the articles cited are open access. The most frequently cited categories are original and review articles as well as clinical studies. Orvosi Hetilap is a weekly published journal, which is covered by many international databases such as PubMed/Medline, Scopus, Embase, and BIOSIS Previews. As regards to the scientific output of the editorial board members, the truncated mean of the number of their publications was 497, citations 2446, independent citations 2014 and h-index 21.

Conclusions: While Orvosi Hetilap fulfils many criteria for getting covered by Thomson Reuters, it is worthwhile to implement a method of online citation system in order to increase the number of citations. In addition, scientific publications of all editorial board members should be made easily accessible. Finally, publications of comparative studies by multiple authors are encouraged as well as papers containing epidemiological data analyses.