[Slovenia's contribution to research in ophthalmology (1991 - 2009)].

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of our study was to evaluate Slovenia's contribution to research in ophthalmology over a period of 18 years (1991 - 2009) including not only ophthalmologists but also other researchers. The aim of the study was to determine the relative contribution, quantitatively and qualitatively, to research in ophthalmology and to determine the trend over the period. The first authors as well as their institutes were evaluated.

METHODS

A bibliometric analysis was performed using the database of the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) 2007 report. All articles published in the top 45 ophthalmology journals listed in the ISI 2007 report were analysed.

RESULTS

A total of 187 170 articles have been published in these journals in the given period of time. Slovenia's ophthalmologists and other researchers published 75 articles or 0.040 % of all publications. The articles were published in 21 of the 45 listed journals. Two were excluded from the study because they were only abstracts. In 8 articles the first author was not a Slovenian ophthalmologist. At the end, 65 articles remained in the study. 22 different Slovenian ophthalmologists were found as first author among these journals. Comparing ophthalmologists and other researchers, ophthalmologists produced 57 from 65 articles or 87.69 %. 13 from 22 ophthalmologists had published only one paper, accounting for 22.8 % (13 of 57) of total first authors. There were 47 articles with one or more co-authors (82.5 %) and 10 papers with a single author, which represent 17.5 % of total papers. There was only one first author who issued more than 10 articles (13 from 57 or 22.8 %). All the contribution came from two university clinical centres, Ljubljana (27 articles or 47.37 %) and Maribor (30 articles or 52.63 %). Three authors contributed to 45.6 % of all papers. Two-thirds of articles were published in English and one-third in German language.

CONCLUSIONS

Although the number of articles published by Slovenia's ophthalmologists is increasing over the last 8 years there is a need to increase the quality and quantity of clinical research in ophthalmology and to involve more ophthalmologists in research work to support these trends.