Family medicine publications in Taiwan: an analysis of the Web of Science database from 1993 to 2012.

BACKGROUND: Academic publications are important for developing a medical specialty or discipline. Since family medicine is a rapidly growing medical specialty in Taiwan, this study aimed to analyze family medicine publications from 1993 to 2012 in Taiwan using the Web of Science database.

METHODS: Published academic articles submitted from departments/institutes of family medicine were retrieved and analyzed from the Web of Science database, which includes articles published in the Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Science Citation Indexed journals from 1993 to 2012.

RESULTS: Among 33,073 published articles submitted from the departments/institutes of family medicine worldwide during the years 1993-2012, 1552 articles (4.69%) were submitted from Taiwan, ranking fourth in the world after the USA, Canada, and Sweden. In total, 1409 articles from Taiwan, excluding meeting abstracts and corrections, were selected for further analyses. During these two decades, family medicine publications increased rapidly. There were 60 articles published during 1993-1997, 180 articles during 1998-2002, 334 articles during 2003-2007, and up to 836 articles during 2008-2012. However, the mean citation number of articles decreased from 19.0 to 17.7, 15.1, and 3.8, and the mean impact factor of published journals decreased from 3.41 to 3.15, 2.78 and 2.82 during the periods 1993-1997, 1998-2002, 2003-2007, and 2008-2012, respectively. Most articles belonged to the subject category of the Medicine, General and Internal category (194 articles, 13.8%), followed by Public Environmental Occupational Health (144 articles, 10.2%), Oncology (126 articles, 9.2%), Endocrinology Metabolism (111 articles, 7.9%), Geriatrics Gerontology (99 articles, 7.0%), and the Gastroenterology Hepatology category (85 articles, 6.0%). However, only six articles (0.4%) were published in the Primary Health Care category.

CONCLUSION: Publications from departments/institutes of family medicine in Taiwan increased rapidly from 1993 to 2012. However, the trends of decreased citation number of articles and journal impact factor, as well as the small amount of articles published in the Primary Health Care Category, deserve further attention and effort.