[Medicina Clinica (1992-1993) seen through the Science Citation Index].

BACKGROUND: MEDICINA CLINICA has been indexed in the Science Citation Index (SCI) database since 1992, listed in the category Medicine, General & Internal, and its impact factor in 1993 was 0.909. Two years as source journal in the SCI database provide enough information to assess its contribution to the international scientific scenario.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Publications of Spanish authors in MEDICINA CLINICA during 1992 and 1993 were retrieved from the SCI. Document types, geographic distribution, institutional sectors, subjects and most productive centers were analyzed. All documents retrieved from the SCI were compared manually with those published in the journal itself. Citations received until November 1996 were collected and reference patterns assessed.

RESULTS: MEDICINA CLINICA was in the upper third of the list of journals of its category ranked by their impact factor. As other general medical journals, it was characterized by the publication of a high number of letters to the editor (48% of documents) and of articles susceptible of being classified in other disciplines according to their contents. Main topics of documents authored by Spanish authors included: Infectious Diseases (15%), Pharmacy/Pharmacology (8.8%), Cancer/Oncology (7.2%), Cardiovascular System (4.9%), Epidemiology/Public Health (4.5%), Endocrinology/Metabolism (4%) and Neurosciences/Neurology (4%). Only 32% of studies corresponding to citable items had been carried out in Barcelona, the city in which the journal is published, 19.5% in Madrid, and almost 9% in Andalucia. Around 66% of articles and only 25% of letters have received at least one citation, with a mean number of citations of 2.83 for articles and 1.3 for letters. Self-citations from other documents published in the same journal were high (77.8% for articles) as compared with citations received from other international SCI journals. Reference patterns found in MEDICINA CLINICA were similar to those of high-ranking journals of the same category. The comparison of documents published in MEDICINA CLINICA to those retrieved from SCI showed a lack of consistency in document types. In respect to the authors' last names, potential problems due to heterogeneity of the bibliographic names of Spanish authors are added to SCI-derived typing errors.

CONCLUSIONS: MEDICINA CLINICA appears open to a broad spectrum of authors, centers and topics. Highly productive health centers in MEDICINA CLINICA are also highly productive in other international journals. Differences between what is published in the journal and how this information is indexed in the SCI database constitute an important obstacle, not only for the journal's visibility, but also for a comprehensive retrieval of the authors' output. Changes in the classification of documents and consistent criteria in the use of bibliographic names of authors are recommended.