Indicadores métricos das publicações científicas na área da saúde coletiva

Abstract

The present study analyzed the metric indicators of scientific publications in Brazilian journals in the area of collective health. A retrospective, quantitative and descriptive study was carried out, evaluating five important scientific journals in this area between 2009 and 2013. The characteristics of the scientific publications of 2,746 scientific articles of the following journals were analyzed: (1) Cadernos de Saúde Pública, (2) Ciência & Saúde Coletiva, (3) Revista de Saúde Coletiva (Physis), (4) Revista Saúde e Sociedade and (5) Revista de Saúde Pública. The analyzed variables were: number of published scientific articles; nature of the study (quantitative, qualitative, both or uninformed); number of authors per scientific article; collaboration in the scientific articles of authors of foreign institutions and Brazilian geographic region of the authors of the scientific article. It is noteworthy that the quantitative methodology was present in 55% of the analyzed articles, being thus more frequent than the qualitative publications with 42%. An important contribution of foreign researchers, present in 212 articles was observed. It is noticed that there was a predominance of scientific articles with 2 to 5 authors and a minority of articles with the presence of more than 8 authors. However, it was still evident the greater concentration of scientific publications in the Southeast and South regions of Brazil, with important asymmetries in relation to the North, Northeast and Center-West regions.