title: Thirty years of family medicine publications in Israel (1975-2004): what, where, and how much?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Departments of family medicine in Israel were established in the 1970s. Until now, little or no effort has been made to characterize the productivity of Israeli board-certified family medicine physicians in publishing peer-reviewed scientific articles.
  
  
  METHODS
  Publications were identified by 2 methods. First, a PubMed search by names of current and past faculty from all the departments of family medicine in Israel (1975-2004). Secondly, all of the departments in Israel forwarded a list of all publications by their faculty (including those that do not appear in Medline). The abstracts of all publications were extracted and were separately and blindly evaluated by 2 reviewers. Publications were classified according to Medline citation, language, journal impact factor, and publication type.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A total of 1165 publications were identified and analyzed. More than half of the articles were published in the last 10 years. Seventy-two percent were cited in Medline. Publications in English encompassed 64.7% of the publications, Hebrew 34.6%, and 0.7% other. Approximately 6% of the articles were published in journals with impact factor > or =3, with research articles accounting for 46.9%. The publication output of family medicine in Israel averaged 85.4 publications per 1000 family medicine physicians per year. Almost 70% of the articles were published in non-family medicine journals. Academically affiliated, board-certified family medicine physicians published at higher rates, averaging 334.3 per 1000 academic family medicine physicians per year (data available for 2000-2004 only).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Publishing and research are important to the development of family medicine as an academic profession, in which Israeli family physicians show significant productivity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, Ben-Gurion Univeristy of the Negev, Israel.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Pshetizky
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tandeter
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tabenkin
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Vinker
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lahad
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Karkabi
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Kitai
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hermoni
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Shvartzman
mesh_terms: D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000266:history*; D005194:Family Practice / Q000266:history*; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D055811:Journal Impact Factor; D008373:Manuscripts as Topic / Q000266:history*; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000266:history*; D011642:Publications / Q000266:history; D013997:Time Factors