title: A comparison of psychiatry and internal medicine: a bibliometric study.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Psychiatric education needs to expose students to a broad range of topics. One resource for psychiatric education, both during initial training and in later continuing medical education, is the scientific literature, as published in psychiatric journals. The authors assessed current research trends in psychiatric journals, as compared with internal-medicine counterparts and examined their relevance to psychiatric education.
  
  
  METHODS
  The authors classified abstracts and original articles as biological or non-biological, based on methodology, from 2008 in Archives of General Psychiatry and The American Journal of Psychiatry, as compared with The Archives of Internal Medicine and Annals of Internal Medicine.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Biological and non-biological studies were similarly frequent in psychiatric journals (48.2% and 51.8%, respectively). Internal-medicine journals had a non-biological and epidemiological predominance (22.2% biological, 77.8% non-biological: epidemiological, 59.9%; reviews, 21.4%; clinical, 13.2%; other, 5.4%).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Psychiatric journals publish more biological studies than internal-medicine journals. This tendency may influence psychiatric education and practice in a biological direction, with less attention to psychosocial or clinical approaches to psychiatry.
authors.affiliation: Dept. of Psychiatry, Tufts University Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Karina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Stone
authors.forename: Elizabeth A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Whitham
authors.forename: S Nassir
authors.initials: SN
authors.lastname: Ghaemi
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000639:trends*; D006801:Humans; D007388:Internal Medicine / Q000193:education* / Q000639:trends; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000193:education* / Q000639:trends; D011643:Publishing / Q000639:trends*