Non-SCI subject visibility of the Latin American scientific production in the health field

Abstract

The purpose of this work was to analyse the non-Science Citation Index subject visibility of the Latin American production in the health field. The methodology used considered manual and automated retrieval of the Latin American journals, as covered by different conventional secondary sources. The IMLA/LILACS (Index Medicus Latinoamericano/Latin American Literature in the Health Sciences) database was used to obtain a master list of the “sustained” journals for the period 1979–1990. The selected journals were classified by subject content, following the scheme of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. A total of 221 journals were selected and a database was developed. The results corroborated the leadership of Brazil in the field. It was also found that the subject content had a strong trend toward the “clinical”, medicine field. The subject “Medicine” was head in the list, with seventy four journals. Several difficulties and barriers to the use of the IMLA/LILACS database were detected. The implications of the overall analysis of this study as affecting researchers, policy makers and data-base producers are stressed by the author.