[Archivos de Bronconeumología: among the 3 Spanish medical journals with the highest national impact factors].
OBJECTIVE
Citation analysis elucidates patterns of information consumption within professional communities. The aim of this study was to analyze the citations of 87 Spanish medical journals by calculating their impact factors and immediacy indices for 2001, and to estimate the importance of Archivos de Bronconeumología within the framework of Spanish medicine.


METHODS
Eighty-seven Spanish medical journals were included. All were listed in the Spanish Medical Index (Indice Medico Español) and in at least one of the following databases: MEDLINE, BIOSIS, EMBASE, or Science Citation Index. References to articles from 1999 through 2001 in citable articles from 2001 were analyzed. Using the method of the Institute for Scientific Information, we calculated the national impact factor and immediacy index for each journal.


RESULTS
The journals with the highest national impact factors were Revista Española de Quimioterapia (0.894), Medicina Clínica (0.89), and Archivos de Bronconeumología (0.732). The self-citation percentage of Archivos de Bronconeumología was 18.3% and the immediacy index was 0.033.


CONCLUSIONS
The impact factor obtained by Archivos de Bronconeumología confirms its importance in Spanish medicine and validates its inclusion as a source journal in Science Citation Index and Journal Citation Report.
Aleixandre Benavent
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Instituto de Historia de la Ciencia y Documentación López Piñero, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Universidad de Valencia, Valencia, Spain. aleixand@uv.es
Valderrama Zurián
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Castellano Gómez
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M
Simó Meléndez
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Navarro Molina
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D015706:Bibliometrics; D006801:Humans; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011643:Publishing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013030:Spain