Obstetrics & Gynecology: evaluation of the portuguese scientific activity based on bibliometric indicators Helena Donato Carlos F. de Oliveira HUC

“Without publication, science is dead” Gerard Piel Reasons to write

■ The scientific publication is a key-step in every investigation project ■ It represents the step where results are submitted to the public scrutiny Reasons to write

 In Medicine and independently from the outstanding results obtained, the task won’t be complete till those results are published  In a first instance do good science, then publish good science “a naturalist´s life would be a happy one if he had only to observe and never to write” Charles Darwin Reasons to write

Introduction ■Bibliometry together with peer-review has been used to assess and quantify the importance of authors and scientific investigations

Introduction ■Bibliometric studies based on data from scientific publications have shown a growing development in the most advanced countries in the last years ■In Portugal there are few studies of that type, at least in the field of biomedicine  Donato HM, De Oliveira CF. Patologia mamaria: avaliação da actividade cientifica nacional através de indicadores bibliométricos:1995 July Acta Med Port. 2006;19(3):  Donato HM, De Oliveira CF. Bibliometria do Cancro em Portugal: 1997 a Actualizações em Oncologia. Coimbra Jan 2008

Bibliometry ■ What is Bibliometry?  A science which enables quantitative and qualitative analysis of the scientific production through evaluation of the produced literature ■ What does it study?  Authors  Subjects  Journals  Departments  Countries

Actualizações em Oncologia Bibliometry Resources ■The widest used resource of bibliometry is the one produced by Thomson Scientific (Institute for Scientific Information), the Web of Science (WOS) ■It evaluates articles published in more than 8700 journals ■It also publishes an yearly Index (Journal Citation Reports) based on the cited articles

Objectives This study deals mainly with : ■ The contribution of portuguese authors to the international scientific production in the specific area of Obstetrics & Gynecology ■ The analysis of the scientific production during the period from 1997 to 2006

Objectives ■Using compiled information, the following indicators were calculated :  Quantitative  Qualitative

Quantitative Indicators ■ Productivity rate of institutions ■ Productivity rate of authors ■ Growth of national production in international publications

Qualitative or Impacting Indicators ■Influence and visibility of scientific production (Impact Factor) ■The widest used bibliometric indicators in the assessment of quality of scientific activity are based on:  The number of citations received by the published articles  The importance / impact of the journals where they were published

Data Collection ■ The study was performed using the Databases  Web of Science (WOS) -  Medline / Pubmed – ■Have not considered publications in national journals, since none of the journals published in Portugal is included in Journal Citation Reports

Search ■ We collected all documents published between 1997 and 2006 about our thematic, where at least an author belongs to a portuguese institution ■We considered all articles, independently from its tipology (revisions, clinical trials, letters, editorials…)

Results ■WOS + PubMed = 846 articles ■747 articles published in Journals with Impact Factor ■Our study is based upon the analysis of the 747 IF articles

Results ■The portuguese scientific contribution to the international scientific production in the field Obstetrics & Gynecology during the studied period, showed a growth of 144%

% Development in the production of Scientific Articles

Productivity of Portuguese Authors ■Parameter distribution by Author:  Seven authors account for 37% of the documents, contributing thus with more than 20 articles  Twenty seven authors account for 46,8% of the documents, with more than 10 articles  Others with 10 or less articles account 16,2%

Co-authorship ■In biomedicine, the rule is co-authorship in publications; portuguese authors follow this international trend ■The co-authorship rate exibits an increase during the years ■Slight increase in the average number of authors by document

Qualitative Analysis of Results ■The analysis of qualitative data from scientific literature enables the assessment of:  The yield of scientific activity and its impact on the community  The impact of the whole of the portuguese scientific production in the area Obstetrics & Gynecology determined by the number of citations obtained by published articles

Citation Report ■Total 747 articles ■Sum of the Times Cited – 7,989 ■Average Citations per Item – 10.96

Citations in each year

Qualitative Analysis of Results ■Articles which envolved international collaboration obtained an higher number of citations  More cited article (Lancet 2005) obtained 604 citations ■Investigation articles are more frequently cited than clinical articles ■The 747 articles were published in journals disposing of an IF

Qualitative Analysis of Results ■The most frequently used subject Categories of JCR are:  Obstetrics & Gynecology (302 articles)  Oncology (148 articles)  Pathology (146 articles)

JCR Categories ■79,7% of the articles are published in 3 Categories ■20,3% of the articles are published in 23 Categories  Biochemistry & Molecular Biology  Pharmacology & Pharmacy  Medicine, General, Internal  Endocrinology & Metabolism  Hematology  …

Journals per JCR Categories ■Category Obstetrics & Gynecology  Has 59 journals, we publish in 31 ■Category Oncology  Has 127 journals we publish in 39 ■Category Pathology  Has 64 journals we publish in 32

Regions

Conclusion ■ The portuguese contribution to the international scientific production in the area Obstetrics & Gynecology in the time period studied is of 0,31 %

World Scientific Production

Iberian Scientific Production Spain is demographically 4,2 x higher than Portugal In terms of Scientific Production is 6,3 x higher than Portugal

Conclusion ■ The portuguese scientific literature in this subject area shows a significant increase in the last 10 years, not only quantitavely (144%), but also at a qualitative level

Conclusion ■ The portuguese scientific literature in this subject area shows a significant increase in the last 10 years, not only quantitavely (144%), but also at a qualitative level

Conclusion ■ Growing visibility of investigation, assessed by the number of articles published in journals of international scope and prestige; publication in well positioned journals in its category ranking ■ Increase of international collaboration Qualitative increase (positive development of Portuguese investigation in the field)

Recommended Literature ■Bakkalbasi N, Bauer K, Glover J, Wang L. Three options for citation tracking: Google Scholar, Scopus and Web of Science. Biomed Digit Libr Jun 29;3:7 ■Falagas ME, Pitsouni EI, Malietzis GA, Pappas G. Comparison of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar: strengths and weaknesses. FASEB J Sep 20; [Epub ahead of print] ■King DA. The scientific impact of nations. Nature 2004;430(6997): ■Manske PR. The impact of the impact factor. J Hand Surg [Am] 2004;29(6):983-6 ■Moya-Anegon FD. Coverage analysis of Scopus:a journal metric approach. Scientometrics 2007;73(1), ■Nayak BK. The enigma of impact factor. Indian J Ophthalmol Dec;54(4): ■Scully C, Lodge H. Impact factors and their significance; overrated or misused? Br Dent J 2005 ;198(7):391-3