Neurological research in Europe, as assessed with a four-year overview of neurological science international journals.

This paper analyses all the peer-reviewed articles published by European authors in 161 neurological journals screened by ISI in accordance with Current Contents/Life Science and Current Contents/Clinical Medicine in the period 1995-1998. Our aim was to report the amount and quality of neurological research in the different countries of the European Union (EU), the USA and the world. The number of papers, the impact factors (IF), the population of the source country and gross domestic product (GDP), were downloaded. Data show that in the EU there is a progressive increase in the number of published papers from 1995 to 1998 and that large countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy rank at the top four places for absolute number of papers. The gap in the number of papers between the USA and the EU significantly diminished in the examined period, from a difference of 14 % to 6 %. However, when the IF is considered, the USA performed better than EU, although excellent results have been obtained by the United Kingdom, Ireland, Netherlands and Sweden. When the number and quality of papers are plotted against the number of inhabitants or GDP, Sweden, the Netherlands and Finland are the leading countries in Europe. The present study demonstrates that neurological research in the EU is active and productive, is steadily increasing and is now a relevant part of all biomedical world research.