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. 2014 Feb 5;9(2):e87945.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0087945. eCollection 2014.

Twelve years of scientific production on Medline by Latin American spine surgeons

Asdrubal Falavigna  1 , Ricardo Vieira Botelho  2 , Alisson Roberto Teles  3 , Pedro Guarise da Silva  1 , Delio Martins  4 , Juan Pablo Guyot  5 , Alvaro Silva Gonzalez  6 , José Maria Jiménez Avila  7 , Helton Luiz Aparecido Defino  8
Affiliations

Twelve years of scientific production on Medline by Latin American spine surgeons

Asdrubal Falavigna et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: Despite the small contribution of LA in the Science Citation Index (SCI), a growing contribution by LA research to international literature has been observed in recent years.

Study design: Systematic review.

Purpose: To evaluate the scientific contribution of Latin American (LA) Spine Surgeons in the last decade.

Methods: A literature search of publications by LA spinal surgeons on topics concerning the spine or spinal cord was performed using an online database; Pubmed.gov. The results were limited to articles published from January 2000 to December 2011. The quality of the publication was evaluated with the journal impact factor (IF), Oxford classification and number of citations.

Results: This study comprised 320 articles published in the Medline database by LA spine surgeons from 2000 to 2011. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of publications by LA spine surgeons. It was observed that 38.4% of LA papers were published in LA journals. 46.6% of the articles were published in journals with an IF lower than 1, and there was no statistically significant difference in the number of articles published in journals with a higher IF during the period. Linear-by-linear association analysis demonstrated an improvement in the level of evidence provided by LA articles published in recent years.

Conclusions: This study showed a growth in the number of publications in last 12 years by LA spinal surgeons. It is necessary to discuss a way to increase quantity and quality of scientific publications, mainly through a better education in research.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Literature review of publications by the Latin American spine surgeons on spine or spinal cord topics using an online database of Pubmed.gov, during the period from January 2000 to December 2011 with the total numbers and the exclusion criteria.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Number of papers according to country.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Number of papers according to year of publication.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Number of papers according to subject.
Figure 5
Figure 5. Number of papers according to journal.
Figure 6
Figure 6. Proportion of papers according to impact factor of the journal during the period of evaluation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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