Preliminary bibliometric evaluation of scientific publications produced in Latin America in the field of tropical and infectious diseases using SciELO

Globally, scientific advancement in developing countries relies on many factors and can be evaluated through different means and instruments [1]. In recent years, interest has increased in the ability of publications, commonly measured through different, bibliometric parameters, to estimate the number of available publications and published papers, as well as their usefulness for other researchers globally and regionally [1,2]. Although most scientific journals in Latin America are not currently indexed in major databases such as Index Medicus/Medline, Excerpta Medica/Embase and Science Citation Index (SCI-ISI), new World Health Organization (WHO)/Pan American Health Organization (PAHO)-supported regional databases have emerged as a result of the need for both bibliographical systems for quality qualification and access to full-text articles from these journals. The SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) initiative is one of these databases Recently, new statistics that enable the analysis of the extent and impact of these regional initiatives tools have been available in this system [3]. Currently this database is the only instrument to measure the impact of such journals because most of them are not indexed in other major databases including SCI-ISI. In other regions such as Asia and Africa, other initiatives have been developed, particularly in Asia where a significant number of journals are indexed in major databases. For these reasons, we are interested in performing a preliminary evaluation, using data obtained from the SciELO system, on the number of scientific publications production in Latin America, specifically in the field of tropical and infectious diseases. We collected information from all the available journals in the field of tropical and infectious diseases currently indexed on SciELO, and then we retrieved data regarding their impact factor (IF, 2-year based, calculated according to ISI methodology [4] using journals of the SciELO system as data sources, " regional SciELO impact factor "), for all the available years (in some cases since 1999 to 2007) [3]. Journal areas included infectious diseases, tropical diseases and tropical medicine, microbiology, parasitology, and entomology. Our interest focused on describing the number of journals available in this system in the field of tropical and infectious diseases, their impact factor values (mean, standard deviation, SD, range), and the evolution of this parameter for each journal during the studied period. Currently in the SciELO initiative, 16 journals (3%) are available in the field of tropical and infectious diseases. These journals belong to Argentina (1), Brazil (8), Chile (4), Cuba (1) and Venezuela …