[Atención Primaria journal in MEDLINE: an analysis of the first 7 years of indexing (1989-1995)].

Simó Miñana, J; Gaztambide Ganuza, M; Latour Pérez, J

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES:

To evaluate the validity of the information of bibliometric interest retrieved from MEDLINE and referred to the articles published by Atención Primaria journal from 1989 to 1995. To describe the presence of this journal and its evolution among the journals of its own thematic group (Family Practice) during the same period.

DESIGN:

Retrospective descriptive study.

MATERIAL:

MEDLINE database on SilverPlatter, 1997 edition. MEASUREMENTS In a first step, all the documents published by the spanish journal during this period have been revised. Secondly, with a sample of 385 documents that comes from 24 issues selected at random, it has been analysed the indexing of the following fields title in english (TI), original title (TO), authors (AU), bibliographic citation (SO), year of publication (PY), country of publication (CP) and type of publication (PT). The field institutional address of primary author (AD) will be studied exhaustively. The number of articles indexed coming from the different journals of the Family Practice group, and their evolution during the studied period were analysed, as the countries and languages of publication of these journals. The spanish journal has been compared with the rest of its thematic group in type of publications and type of studies (PT field). MAIN

RESULTS:

MEDLINE hasn't indexed 158 out of 1865 (8.47%) of the documents published by the journal from 1985 to 1995. This percentage becomes 4.04% when reply letters, that MEDLINE doesn't indexed, are not considered. MEDLINE offers the field AD for the papers published by the Spanish journal from 1990. From this moment on the field AD appears in 95% of the indexed documents. The 30% of the registers without the AD field, don't have institutional address in the original document. The institution or centre that MEDLINE cites firstly in the AD field, coincide with the one of the first author, in 99% of the cases. The number of authors is correct in all cases, even if in 3.37 +/- 1.8% there are typographical mistakes. TO, SO, PY and CP fields are always corrected. Nevertheless MEDLINE modifies in 66.7 +/- 4.7% of the documents the english title (TI field). The presence of the spanish journal in the Family Practice group has continuously increased in global terms from its inclusion in MEDLINE database, even if its relative contribution has stayed the same, around a 14%, in the course of the period analysed. There are differences between the spanish journal and the rest of the journals of its thematic group in type of publications and type of studies.

CONCLUSIONS:

The analysis of the 7 first years of the Atención Primaria indexing bring us to affirm that MEDLINE can be used to obtain valid information to describe some bibliometric aspects interesting for the scientific production, mainly coming from primary care spanish professionals, and published in this journal. Translations into english of the titles that appears in the english summary had to be improved. Institutional address had to be always and more clearly provided. The presence of the spanish journal among the journals of its thematic group is important (14%), even if its profile in type of publications and type of studies is significantly different.