Bibliometric analysis of articles published in Discover Medicine

Abstract

Introduction: student scientific journals play an important role in the transformation of the modern medical university in Latin America. The objective of the article was to characterize the scientific production of the magazine Discover Medicine.

Method: a bibliometric, descriptive and cross-sectional study was carried out of the articles published in the regular issues of the Discover Medicine journal published between 2017 and 2020. The universe was made up of the 86 articles published in the period. The Productivity Index and the Price index were used. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics.

Results: a predominance of original articles was found (38,37 %); 95,35 % of the articles were written in Spanish. 345 signers were reported, with a predominance of multiple authorship. 62,79 % of the articles had a man as the first author. 82,33 % of the authors were small producers, without reports of large producer investigations. The country with the highest number of signatories was Paraguay (283 signatories) and the most productive institution was the National University of Asunción (240 signatories). 968 references were used, with an average of 11,26 per article. 576 references were found in English, and the Price Index was found between 0,36 and 0,78.

Conclusions: the original articles, written in Spanish and of multiple authorship, constituted the core of the journal's production. Male authors and small producers led scientific production. There was a high institutional inbreeding. Bibliographic references in Spanish were common, as well as a low Price Index.

Received: 24/06/2021. Acepted: 12/10/2021