Central international visibility of Brazilian psychiatric publications from 1981 to 1995

Abstract

In this study, we examine the scientific output of Brazilian psychiatry, based on the database of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), publications in the 10 most important psychiatric journals, and publications in major Brazilian journals. The number of Brazilian publications (i.e., those carrying at least one Brazilian address) in psychiatry in the ISI database increased by 168% during the 15-year period under study (1981-1995). Despite this growth, the relative contribution of publications in psychiatry to the country's publications in medical sciences did not change over the 15-year period. This fraction, around 2%, remained at less than one-third of the average contribution of psychiatry journals to publications in medicine worldwide. The impact inferred from number of citations (1981-1992) shows that Brazilian articles in psychiatry were cited less than the world average in this field. In the 10 psychiatry journals with the highest impact, Brazilian authors published only 48 articles in the 1981-1995 period, representing only 0.2% of the articles in those journals. Like their American and British counterparts, Brazilian psychiatrists also published primarily in domestic journals: 87.1% of the publications by Brazilians appeared in the two major Brazilian psychiatric journals, compared with only 12.9% in foreign journals. Among publications in psychiatry in the ISI database, the number of articles co-authored by Brazilians with scientists from other countries increased 12.3 fold from 1981-1985 to 1991-1995, representing at the end 50% of all publications by Brazilian psychiatrists in international journals. Despite all cuts in funding for Brazilian science during the last decades, all of the articles in our sample originated in public universities, and only 10 universities were responsible for ∼70% of the publications by Brazilian psychiatrists in our survey period. We conclude that Brazilian psychiatric research is a subject worthy of particular concern, especially if we take into account the country's modest scientific performance and the socio-economic consequences of mental disorders in the Brazilian population.