Abstract
BackgroundResearch in the fields of Preventive Medicine, Occupational/Environmental Medicine, Epidemiology and Public Health play an important role in the advancement of knowledge. In order to map the research production around the world we performed a bibliometric analysis in the above fields.MethodsAll articles published by different world regions in the above mentioned scientific fields and cited in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) during the period 1995 and 2003, were evaluated. The research production of different world regions was adjusted for: a) the gross domestic product in 1995 US dollars, and b) the population size of each region.ResultsA total of 48,861 articles were retrieved and categorized. The USA led the research production in all three subcategories. The percentage of articles published by USA researchers was 43%, 44% and 61% in the Preventive Medicine, Epidemiology, and Public Health subcategories, respectively. Canada and Western Europe shared the second position in the first two subcategories, while Oceania researchers ranked second in the field of Public Health.ConclusionUSA researchers maintain a leadership position in the production of scientific articles in the fields of Preventive Medicine, Occupational/Environmental Medicine and Epidemiology, at a level similar to other scientific disciplines, while USA contribution to science in the field of Public Health is by all means outstanding. Less developed regions would need to support their researchers in the above fields in order to improve scientific production and advancement of knowledge in their countries.
Highlights
Research in the fields of Preventive Medicine, Occupational/Environmental Medicine, Epidemiology and Public Health play an important role in the advancement of knowledge
2, and 3 we present the actual number of articles produced each year during the study period from each world region, in the "Preventive and Occupational/Environmental Medicine", "Epidemiology", and "Public Health" Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) categories, respectively
The last two columns of each table present data adjusted for the gross domestic product (GDP) and the population size of each region
Summary
Research in the fields of Preventive Medicine, Occupational/Environmental Medicine, Epidemiology and Public Health play an important role in the advancement of knowledge. The fields of Preventive Medicine, Occupational/Environmental Medicine, Epidemiology and Public Health constitute scientific fields, along with clinical medicine, which play an important role on people's health around the world [1,2,3]. Our group has previously published a number of articles assessing the research production of different world regions on several scientific disciplines, there are limited data on the bibliometric assessment of research in the fields of our present study with several reported limitations [14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22]
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