Bibliometric analysis of the scientific productivity of the Italian Society of Nephrology for a period of five consecutive years (1990-1994).

Abstract

There is a widespread assumption that a scientific society achieves a leading role in international medicine when high output research activity is realized by articles published in leading journals. We reviewed medical publications by the members of the Italian Society of Nephrology for a period of five consecutive years, from 1990 to 1994, with the aid of an on-line MEDLINE. For larger, aggregated data, weighted citation count is laborious and intensive; for this reason we considered the impact factor (IF) given to the journals for the year of publication. A publication count gives the total volume of research output, but it provides no indication as to the quality of the work performed; for this reason the total amount of IF and its mean were considered. Table 1 shows the total number of publications per year, the sum of the IF of the journals in which papers produced by Italian renal units were published, and the mean of IF. It is evident that the rate of publications per year, as well as the total IF, showed small fluctuation over the years, while the mean IF per year improved, thus showing that the scientific activity of the society increased in quality even though reducing the number of publications. Since different specialities exhibit different ranges of peak IF, we divided papers into two groups, according to publication in nephrology or non-nephrology journals. Table 2 shows the total number of papers published in different nephrology peer-reviewed journals. Most of the Italian papers were published in three journals: Nephron (135), Nephrology Dialysis Transplantation (98) and Kidney International (77). If Table 1. Total number of publications per year in peer-reviewed journals