[Indexes for the evaluation of scientific publications: what they are and what they are used for]. / Indíces para a avaliação e publicações científicas: o que são e para que servem.

ABSTRACT

Today, medicine lives the paradigm of Evidence-Based Medicine, which integrates the most recent discoveries of Research in day-to-day Clinical Practice. Simultaneously, there is an exponential growth in biomedical scientific knowledge, and, with it, of the number of scientific papers and biomedical journals. Currently, the assessment of the quality of biomedical scientific information is based on the peer review method, which also has different types of bias. In this setting, quantitative indexes are increasingly being used to assess it. Three of these indexes are the quotation rate, the impact factor and the Immediacy Index that, despite their objectivity, have several limitations. The impact factor, which is a valid tool to estimate the quality of a scientific journal, is not suited to evaluate single articles, scientists or research groups. In these cases, the best methodology is quotation analysis. No method, however, can replace the individual reading and study of the contents of the scientific work. Of the new potentialities of biomedical information, the possibility of discussing scientific articles before their publication is particularly promising. With this purpose, the netprints servers, which are new sites on the Internet, were created. Other sites where we can have access to databases with summaries of guidelines have also been created in an attempt to reduce the gap between research and clinical practice.