Abstract

CANEDO ANDALIA, Rubén. Impact of Cuban Medical Journals in Scopus. Rev. cuba. inf. cienc. salud [online]. 2014, vol.25, n.3, pp.333-350. ISSN 2307-2113.

Scopus citation indexes for contributions by Cuban authors in the field of health sciences were identified and compared with those of selected Latin American countries to determine and explain their behavior based on the distribution of certain variables of interest. Use was made of SCImago Journal & Country Rank. Cuban scientific production in health sciences in Scopus practically doubles other knowledge areas. 69,27 % of such production corresponds to medicine, 62,87 % was published in national journals and 66,44 % in Spanish. The citation index for Cuban scientific production in health sciences is considerably lower than for countries considered as great and moderate producers of medical literature in Latin America. From 2009 to 2011 Cuban medical journals published 1 815 citable papers. However, only 80 citations were received in 2012, for an average of 0,044 per published paper. The volume of Cuban medical literature published in national journals and processed by Scopus, together with their poor citation indexes, substantially lowers the citation indexes of Cuba as a country. It is thus urgent to increase the quality of the contributions published by these journals with a view to reducing their total volume and raising citation levels.

Keywords : impact; scientific production; health; international databases; Cuba.

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