[Bibliometric profile of Tunisians medicals publications indexed in Medline from 2000 to 2003 party 1: productivity and cartography]

Abstract

Objective: The objective of this work is to quantify the Tunisian productivity in medical publications, and to determine its national cartography.

Methods: It turns about a descriptive bibliometric study of the Tunisian medical researches through the whole of the papers indexed in the Medline database, and this during the period of four years, between 2 000 and 2 003. We retained only the articles which satisfied the two following conditions: on the one hand the address is a tunisian health structure and on the other hand, the first and/ or the last author is a tunisian doctor.

Results: Among the 2057 medical articles found during of the request of Medline's database, I 248 papers were eligible to the study. The indicators of the national productivity in medical publications were 27.3 articles / 100 teacher / year, de 3,2 articles / 100 W(X) habitants / year et de 10,6 articles / billion dinars / year. In addition, 97.33% of the medical tunisian publications have been produced by the hospitalo-university structures.

Conclusion: It results of this study that the tunisian medical research is characterized by a low productivity and an important hospitalo centrism. Its development requires on the one hand more formation of doctors in research's methodology and in medical writing, and the other hand a structured activity medical documentary wakefulness and bibliometric analysis.