The Weight of Local Journals in Latin America and Caribbean Research on Epidemiology

The present study aims to measure the weight of Latin American and Caribbean (LA&C) journals in the regional research on epidemiology throughout the 1992-2006 period. The analysis was carried out upon the 304,875 articles retrieved from MEDLINE,. Bradford's zones of dispersion were used to determine epidemiology core journals as well as to compare affiliation country and country of publication. Results were analyzed considering the total number of articles on epidemiology from the whole MEDLINE database and that authored by LA&C researchers. The analysis showed that regional research is been published in a larger number of journals in recent times. In the process of disseminating regional research on epidemiology, most of LA&C researchers seek domestic journals rather than international ones, probably due to regional similarities on cultural and social aspects as well as on health conditions. Such scenario suggests that LA&C researchers are exchanging more among themselves, thus, getting more knowledge (or at least, diffusing more) about shared conditions and problems.