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The British Journal of Psychiatry (2001) 179: 561
© 2001 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Correspondence

World psychiatric literature

G. A. Fava, F. Ottolini and E. Tossani

Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Viale Berti Pichat 5, 40127 Bologna, Italy

EDITED BY MATTHEW HOTOPF

Patel & Sumathipala (2001) have provided an interesting survey of the country of origin of papers published in six psychiatric journals over a 3-year period. Only 6% of the literature was published from non-Euro-American countries. Unfortunately, the authors equate this low representation with the state of international research in psychiatry and these inferences are amplified by two accompanying commentaries (Leff/Cheng, 2001).

It has been repeatedly shown that use of journals' impact factors to infer the actual citations of individual papers or investigators is misleading (Fava & Ottolini, 2000). Further, both the authors of and the commentators on the study have failed to cite the research evidence available in terms of international trends (Fava & Montanari, 1998). Such evidence is based on the National Science Indicators on Diskette developed by the Institute for Scientific Information. All journals listed in Current Contents under the heading of Psychiatry were included in the database. The number of papers published per year, their citations, and the number of citations received per paper published were reported. Even though North America and the European Union rule the psychiatric arena, the picture is rather different from the one portrayed by Patel & Sumathipala. In the most recent survey of world psychiatric literature (Fava et al, 2001), limited to the journals included under the heading of Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry in Current Contents (Clinical Medicine), an impressive growth in impact from Latin America was documented. Fortunately, the progress of international psychiatric research is not confined to the six journals selected for the analysis by Patel & Sumathipala. None the less, many of their comments are valid and useful.

REFERENCES

Fava, G. A. & Montanari, A. (1998) National trends in behavioral sciences (1981-1996). Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 67, 281-301.[CrossRef][Medline]

Fava, G. A. & Ottolini, F. (2000) Impact factors versus actual citations. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 69, 285-286.[CrossRef][Medline]

Fava, G. A., Ottolini, F. & Sonino, N. (20001) Which are the leading countries in clinical medicine research? A citation analysis (1981-1998). Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 70, 283-287.[Medline]

Leff, J./Cheng, A. T. A. (2001) Invited commentaries on: International representation in psychiatric literature. Survey of six leading journals. British Journal of Psychiatry, 178, 410-411.[Free Full Text]

Patel, V. & Sumathipala, A. (20001) International representation in psychiatric literature. Survey of six leading journals. British Journal of Psychiatry, 178, 406-409.[Abstract/Free Full Text]





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