Análisis de la circulación de las revistas biomédicas españolas en bases de datos nacionales e internacionales.

Abstract

In view of the importance of the scientific journals as vehicles for the transmission of knowledge, in this thesis we have assessed the visibility of spanish medical journals by considering data from the Ulrichs International Periodicals Directory in the year 2000. The coverage of this directory has been compared with the specialized data bases Index Medicus/medline, ¿Indice M¿edico Espanol/ime and Journal Citation Reports (jcr). The evolution across the twentieth century of 459 spanish medical journals included in the Ulrichs International Periodicals Directory has been analyzed, studying aspects such as: the year the journal was founded, the age and stability, the location at which the journal was edited, the publisher type (commercial or institutional), the thematic area, the publication frequency, the direct publication (subscription/print-run) and indirect publication (circulation in data bases), presence in libraries, electronic editions and publication language. Additionally, we have analyzed which journals have reached the maximum degree of international visibility, i.e., those circulating simultaneously in the Ulrichs International Periodicals Directory, in the medline, in the ime and in the jcr. In this case we have studied the impact factor in addition to those aspects formerly mentioned. We found the journals which dominated are those founded in 1981-1990, those that have survived between 10 and 30 years, those edited in Madrid and Barcelona, and those that are published by commercial publishers and professional/scientific societies. Common characteristics of these journals are that they are in scientific areas: medical sciences, pharmacology and surgery, have a trimonthly and bimonthly periodicity, have a print-run between 1000 and 5000 copies and circulate mainly in the data bases: Excerpta Medica/ embase, ¿Indice M¿edico Espanol/ime and Index Medicus/medline. With respect to their electronic editions, most of them are electronic versions of the paper journal, and with respect to their language, most of them are written in Spanish. We found that Actas Espanolas de Psiquiatr¿ýa, Journal of Physiology and Biochemistry, Medicina Cl¿ýnica, Nefrolog¿ýa, Revista Cl¿ýnica Espanola, Revista de Neurolog¿ýa, Revista Espanola de Cardiolog¿ýa and Revista Espanola de Enfermedades Digestivas constitute the eight spanish medical journals with the highest circulation in the year 2000.