OBJECTIVE

To analyze the number of articles by Spanish authors in three international anesthesiology journals and assess the impact of Spanish anesthesiology literature during the same period by way of citations.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

Articles published in Anesthesiology, British Journal of Anesthesiology (BJA) and Anesthesia & Analgesia (Anesth Analg) during 1997 were reviewed. We collected the following data: type of document, country of origin of the authors, total number of references, number of citations of Spanish articles and the journals from which they were cited. Later, the Spanish contribution was compared to that of other countries of the European Union, with data considered in function of Gross National Product per capita (GNPpc) of each country.

RESULTS

The incidence of Spanish articles published in Anesthesiology, BJA and Anesth Analg was 0.37%, 0.71% and 0.9%, respectively. The production of Spanish documents in function of GNPpc ranked Spain in the tenth position in Anesthesiology, eleventh in BJA and sixth in Anesth Analg. Of the total number of citations, 143 (0.4%) were of Spanish publications. In Spanish articles in Anesthesiology the percentage of Spanish citations was 11%, in BJA the figure was 44% and in Anesth Analg it was 13%. Finally, over 90% of the Spanish articles cited in Anesthesiology and in Anesth Analg were published in English in foreign journals.

CONCLUSIONS

The number of Spanish articles published in Anesthesiology, BJA, and Anesth Analg is low, although the comparison of our productivity with that of other EU countries in function of GNPpc places us in an intermediate position. The impact of Spanish literature on international studies is low, particularly research published in Spanish national journals, a circumstance that is reflected even in articles published by Spanish authors.