[Evaluation of scientific productivity at otorhinolaryngologic services in Spain in 1998-2002].
OBJECTIVE
To count the scientific contributions that were carried out at the Otorhinolarngology Departments in Spain from 1998 to 2002 years and to measure their scientific relevance using different bibliometrics tools.


METHODS
Abstracts of articles located on MedLine (http://www.ncbi.nih.gov/PubMed) that have been published by Otorhinolaryngology departments in Spain, by a specific designed search strategy. Papers were classified by journal type (national/international) and study design (original or clinical case). A rank of productivity per hospital was design according to the following variables: total number of articles, total number of originals and cummulative impact factor (according to the category assigned by the Journal of Citation Reports, 2000 from the Institute for Scientific Information).


RESULTS
A total of 18,472 papers were located, being 703 papers from 116 Otorhinolaryngology departments in Spain. This represents a 4% of the world's scientific production. There were 196 international and 498 papers in Spanish journals; in addition, 439 were original articles and 265 clinical cases. The centers in Spain with the most relevant scientific productivity are: Hospital Central de Asturias, Hospital Virgen del Rocío de Sevilla, Hospital La Paz de Madrid, Hospital Santa Creu i San Pau de Barcelona, Clínica Universitaria de Navarra and Clínica Puerta de Hierro de Madrid (all of them with a cummulated impact factor in 5 years > 10).
López-Escamez
J A
JA
Grupo Otología & Otoneurología, CTS 495, Unidad de ORL, Area de Cirugía, Hospital de Poniente, El Ejido, Almería. jalopeze@cajamar.es
D015706:Bibliometrics; D006268:Health Facilities; D010036:Otolaryngology; D011643:Publishing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013030:Spain