Effect of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Academic Publishing Behavior of Dermatologists

Aim: The coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic since its inception, has significantly impacted the academic activities of medical doctors. The decrease in physicians' workload and the urge to share new knowledge about the new disorder caused medical doctors to write and publish academic papers rapidly. We investigated the effects of the pandemic on the academic publishing behavior of dermatologists in Turkey. Materials and Methods: The study was conducted through a PubMed search using the keywords "Dermatology Turkey". Search limits were set for 20172019 for the pre-pandemic period and 2020-2022 for the post-pandemic era. Irrelevant articles were manually excluded. The publication year, type and subject of publication, whether the study was multicenter or multidisciplinary, and the journal were noted for each paper. Data obtained were analyzed using the IBM SPSS Statistics 25 package program. Results: The search revealed 986 and 1420 articles for the pre- and post-pandemic periods, respectively. The most published subjects were drugs and drug eruptions before the pandemic and COVID-19 after the pandemic. An increase in the ratio of "letters to editors" and in multicenter studies was noted in the post-pandemic era. The distribution among the journals of publication changed strikingly, and 35.8% of papers were published in only two journals after the pandemic. Conclusion: There were significant changes in the publishing behavior of Turkish dermatologists during the pandemic. We believe that this study is important as a demonstration of the academic behaviors of dermatologists and a guide for young dermatologists who wish to publish.