Biomedical research productivity and economic crisis in Greece: a 22-year study

Abstract

This article aims to study the effect of the current financial crisis (2010–2017) on biomedical productivity and impact of Greece-affiliated investigators. PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science were searched for articles published in biomedical journals with at least one Greek affiliation during the period 1995–2016 (date of last search October 19, 2017). The impact of Greek articles was the citations received by published articles during the first 2 years following the year of publication adjusted to the number of Greek and global articles. A discrepancy in the absolute article productivity between the databases was observed: a mean annual increase before the crisis was observed in all databases, while after the crisis the increase persisted in PubMed, in Scopus a decline was observed and in the Web of Science a smaller increase was observed. The changes in relative productivity were similar for both study periods in all databases (increasing before and decreasing after crisis, p < 0.001 for trend in both periods). A continuous increase in total citations in both periods was observed (mean 2347 ± 1622 before and 2627 ± 3374 after the crisis). A continuous increase in the impact indices following adjustment for Greek (mean annual increase 0.27 ± 0.30 before to 0.37 ± 0.62 during the crisis, p = 0.58) and global productivity (mean annual increase from 0.0024 ± 0.0018 to 0.0007 ± 0.004, p = 0.95) was observed throughout the study period. In conclusion, the decline observed in the relative productivity of Greek affiliated articles during crisis compared to the period before was not reflected in their impact.