Publications of Primary Care spanish paediatricians in scientific journals. 1999-2005

Objective: analyze the scientific production of Spanish primary care paediatricians (PAP) in order to a better knowledge of their researching profile. Methods: descriptive study of biomedical publications during 1999-2005, in five steps: 1) review article by article of Spanish paediatric journals and primary care journals; 2) combined Medline-Embase search; 3) search by author; 4) personal contact with authors, and 5) contact with key persons. Papers from PAP and signed from Primary Care were identified and author, institution, journal, type of publication, topics and funds were described. Results: papers identified were 565, signed by 286 authors (first PAP who signed), from 14,955 evaluated articles. Most of them (84.9%) had the PAP as first author. The 48.8% of papers and 70% of original articles were indexed by Medline or Embase and 24 (4.2%) were published in English language journals. Four out of ten papers were signed in collaboration with other institutions. A total of 240 papers (42.5%) were original articles, observational studies in general. Three journals gathered more than half papers (Rev Pediatr Aten Primaria, An Pediatr and Aten Primaria). Asturias, La Rioja, Cantabria and Navarra were the regions with better ratio of indexed publications by paediatrician and year. Overall, the regions with more number of publications were Madrid, Catalonia and Valencia. Papers were classified in 45 topics and were found 16 papers supported with external funds. Conclusions: Spanish primary care paediatricians publish 80 papers per year (34 originals). ? Only the half of papers is indexed by Medline or Embase. ? There is a trend to publish original papers in indexed journals. ? Publication in English language journals is anecdotic.