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Origin and Content of Articles Published in North America and Great Britain From 1983 to 1998

Ronald K. Tompkins, MD; Clifford Y. Ko, MD; Arthur J. Donovan, MD

Arch Surg. 2001;136:1345-1351.

Hypothesis  The origin and characteristics of articles published in the 6 highest rated (Institute for Scientific Information classification) English-language general surgical journals have changed significantly during the past 15 years.

Design  All articles published in 1983, 1988, 1993, and 1998 in 5 US surgical journals and 1 British surgical journal were reviewed and characterized.

Main Outcome Measures  Absolute numbers and proportions of national and international articles published in each journal.

Results  Articles reviewed included 4868 in US journals and 1380 in the British journal. The total number of US journal articles decreased by 15.1%. The total number of British journal articles increased by 58.9%.The percentage of national articles decreased from 87.5% to 68.8% in US journals (P<.001) and constituted the minority of freely submitted articles in 1998 in 3 of 5 US journals. The percentage of national articles also decreased from 74.8% to 47.1% in the British journal (P<.001). Articles by European and Asian authors showed the most striking increases in all journals. The percentage of basic research articles declined in US journals from 23.3% to 17.9% (P = .001) owing to a 14.9% decline in national basic research articles. The percentage of clinical randomized studies increased from 2.2% to 4.1% (P<.008), but the increase was attributable to international articles. Government funding alone decreased from 13.6% to 11.2%, and government plus another source of funding decreased from 19.2% to 16.7% for national articles in US journals.

Conclusions  Internationalization of the highly rated British and the 5 highest rated US general surgical journals has occurred. The decrease in the number of national articles in the US journals has been accompanied by significant decreases in government funding and basic research articles and a static output of clinical randomized studies from North America.

From the Departments of Surgery, University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA School of Medicine (Drs Tompkins and Ko), and Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California (Dr Donovan), Los Angeles.

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