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Abstract

Objective. To calculate the impact indicators Cuiden from a great amount of Iberoamerican nursing magazines.

Methods. Because of its design, it's about a bibliometric study. Thirty - three nursing magazines, published in the year 2002, have been included; twenty of them were Spanish, five Brazilian, three Mexican, two Colombian, and one from Cuba, Chile and Argentina.

For the calculation of the indicators the following variables have been selected: number of articles per magazine, number of quotations which each magazine receives, number of auto quotations and the date of publications of the mentioned articles. Three indicators of quotes Cuiden have been calculated: Historic Impact, Historic Impact excluding auto quotes, and Immediate Impact.

Results. From the 33 magazines, there are 9 which stand out. In alphabetical order : Index de Enfermería (Spain), Enfermería Clínica (Spain), Enfermería Intensiva (Spain), Desarrollo Científico de Enfermería (Mexico), Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem (Brazil), Matronas Profesión (Spain), Rol de Enfermería (Spain), Revista Latinoamericana de Enfermagem (Brazil) y Gerokomos (Spain).

Conclusions. The linguistic area of Spanish and Portuguese has got an important number of magazines with a large impact. Publishing in magazines with great impact is an element that improves the circulation of any research. Nurses must consider this fact and think about the publication on these magazines whatever the country they may be published. Nowadays globalization doesn't mean barriers for the circulation of the knowledge.

Introduction

We would guess that the globalization of information is a phenomenon that affects all disciplines, and that implies an exchange and transference of knowledge and information in a digital format and in real time in between users that live or work in distant places and geographic areas located at great distance.

Logically, you would expect that the phenomenon of globalization has also affected nurses and that therefore, for example, there is a fluid communication between what is happening in Spain and Mexico or Colombia. However, this logical thinking is not valid, and empiric data shows that the general trend is that national communication between nurses of the linguistic area of Spanish and Portuguese evolves to the margins of globalization^1-2. In any case, apart from this indicator of self-imposed isolation, there is a common denominator among Spanish nurses: the tendency to read Anglo-Saxon scientific press.

What might be happening? There are various explanations, even though none must be good enough as to satisfy everybody. You could argue that there is no a suitable management of the knowledge produced by the nurses that use Spanish and Portuguese as a vehicle for the transmission of knowledge. However, the truth is that nurses have had already for a while free internet access to the bibliographic data base CUIDEN-which exhaustively includes all the Spanish and Latin American scientific production-, LILACS o the project Scielo - that gives access to some full text online-. It is possible that nurses are lacking a better knowledge in the management and consumption of information while at the same time an important number of the authors of the articles are professors or are somehow connected to the university. You could also think that another reason relates to the fact that in some countries the access to the new technologies is not universal, but the Net is present in all institutions and access is available for all its workers. One also affirms that the predominant language in the Net is English and that the rest of languages are in disadvantage. This would be the reason why in the process of bibliographic revision articles and documents in English are more accessible.

And considering all the previous as certain, there are probable other determinant factors that we all know but remain underground: we are still impressed by the "American³" product and we remain obstinate to use and give credit to the knowledge created by our socio-linguistics surrounding⁴. This is the deference in between being participant of knowledge or being restricted to the knowledge generated by others. This is the difference in between to be and being, in between power and dependence.

When we speak of bibliometric indicators and scientific nursing production, this dependence has the name of the Institute of Scientific Information -Philadelphia-, which stays that the nursing bibliographic production written in Portuguese and Spanish does not exist for science, and that the only nursing existing science is that written in English^4-5. Consequently, it is a lucrative enterprise what defines what is and is not science. Even worst, those excluded not only do not complain but also obediently accept the dispositions of the Institute, struggling to publish what the Institute of Scientific Information says is science^5-6.

It is obvious that nursing expressed in English and Spanish exists and thus its significance as to be studied^1,2. Our working team has reported data regarding the scientific production of the Spanish nursing from the beginning of the decade of the 1990´s, and thanks to that we already have with an important number of indicators that allow us to understand its evolution and characteristics^5,7-10. However, it is essential to start with a similar project for Latin America ^{1, 2}. This is the reason why this study intends to elaborate basic indicators that analyze the impact of the scientific nursing production of the linguistic areas of Spanish and Portuguese. This is the necessary alternative to evaluate periodic publications as instruments for the transmission of knowledge as well as to promote quality standards and evaluation criteria among authors, magazines and institutions. The question to be answered is then: Which are the magazines with more impact?

Methods

Design. Quantitative and descriptive study based on the analysis of the bibliographic citations referred in nursing magazines edit in 2002.

Source magazines. We have included 33 magazines in this study, 20 of which were Spanish, 5 Brazilian, 3 Mexican, 3 Colombian and one from Cuba, Chile and Argentina. These magazines are: Anales de Ciencias de la Salud (Spain), Cultura de los Cuidados (Spain), Enfermería Científica (Spain), Enfermería Clínica (Spain), Enfermería Intensiva (Spain), Enfermería Integral (Spain), Enfermería de Albacete (Spain), Enfermería Docente (Spain), Enfermería de Jaén (Spain), Enfermería Nefrológica (Spain), Enfermería Radiológica (Spain), Enfermería Urológica (Spain), Gerokomos (Spain), Híades (Spain), Hygia (Spain), Index de Enfermería (Spain), Inquietudes (Spain), Matronas Profesión (Spain), Metas de Enfermería (Spain) Rol de Enfermería (Spain), Temas de Enfermería Actualizados (Argentina), Actualizaciones en Enfermería (Colombia), Investigación y Educación en Enfermería (Colombia), Revista Cubana de Enfermería (Cuba), Ciencia y Enfermería (Chile), Desarrollo Científico de Enfermería (Mexico), Revista Mexicana de Enfermería Cardiológica (Mexico), Revista de enfermería del IMSS (Mexico), Revista da Escola de Enfermagem da USP (Brasil), Texto & Contexto Enfermagem (Brasil); Revista Paulista de Enfermagem (Brasil), Revista Latino-Americana de Enfermagem (Brasil) y Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem (Brasil).

The criterion used to select the magazines was double: they had to be included in the date base CUIDEN and the periodicals library of the Index Foundation (Granada, Spain), had to have all the numbers published in the year 2002.

Criteria of inclusion and exclusion of articles. We have included in the study all the articles of the magazines with a bibliography. We have systematically excluded all articles with a typology of interview and selectively the letter to the director and editorials.

Variables, indicators and analysis. To calculate the indicators we have selected the following variables: number of articles per magazine, number of citations per magazine, number of auto citations and date of publishing of the cited article.

We have calculated three indicators of Cuiden^® citation: Historic Impact (Rch^®), Historic Impact excluding auto cites (Rch-a^®), and Inmediate Impact (Rci^®).

Inmediate Cuiden Impact, Rci^®, was calculated dividing the citations received by a source magazine in the two previous years to its quoting, by the total number of published articles during the year of the study.  

Historic Cuiden Impact, Rch, was calculated dividing the total number of citations that a source magazine receives, by the number of published articles during the year of the study.

Cuiden Impact excluding Auto-Citations, Rch-a, was obtained dividing the total number of citations received by a source magazine -excluding auto-citations-, by the number of articles published during the year of the study.

Results

There were 1119 articles revised. The number of found references was of 15.468, of which 2.706 were in nursing magazines, and of them 1.618 (59, 79%) belonged to magazines of the linguistic area of Spanish and Portuguese. Of these 1618 referred, 1384 (85, 54%) were found on any of the 33 source magazines.

Immediate Cuiden Impact

The estimated value of the Immediate Impact was of 0,25, that is, in between 2000 and 2002 the source magazines were quoted once every four published articles in 2002. Table I summarizes the value of the immediate impact indicator regarding each of the 33 source magazines considered in descended order.

There are nine magazines with an Immediate Impact higher or equal to average. These are, in alphabetic order: Index de Enfermería (Spain), Enfermería Clínica (Spain), Enfermería Intensiva (Spain), Desarrollo Científico de Enfermería (Mexico), Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem (Brasil), Matronas Profesión (Spain), Rol de Enfermería (Spain), Revista Latinoamericana de Enfermagem (Brasil) y Gerokomos (Spain).

Under ideal circumstances -constant number of published articles within a year and no more than one citation per article- it can be affirmed that between 40% and 12,5% of the articles published two years before in these nine magazines will be quoted.

In the opposite extreme there are the magazines that have not been quoted in the two years previous to this study: Enfermería Integral (Spain), Inquietudes (Spain), Hygia (Spain), Revista Mexicana de Enfermería Cardiológica (Mexico), Anales de Ciencias de la Salud (Spain), Enfermería de Jaén (Spain) y Enfermería Docente (Spain).

Historic Cuiden Impact

The Historic Cuiden Impact agglutinates the group of citations that a source magazine receives of other collections of magazines without taking into account the chronologic variable. Table 2 summarizes the value of this indicator for each one of the source magazines.

The estimated value of the Historic Impact was of 1,24, which means that  each published article quoted at least one source magazine. The more quoted magazines were: Enfermería Clínica (Spain), Rol de Enfermería (Spain), Enfermería Intensiva (Spain), Revista da Escola de Enfermagem da USP (Brasil), Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem (Brasil), Index de Enfermería (Spain), Gerokomos (Spain) y Texto & Contexto Enfermagem (Brasil). On the contrary, there were two magazines that were not quoted: Enfermería de Jaén y Enfermería Docente.

Historic Cuiden Repercussion without Auto-Citations

Excluding auto-citations it can be determined the number of citations that each magazine receives from the rest of the magazines. The estimated value of the Historic Cuiden Repercussion without Auto-Citations was of 0,75- average, there were three citations every four articles- although this indicator oscillates in between 0 and 2,42 depending of the magazine (Table 3). 39,02 % of the citations received by magazines were auto-citations. There are 14 magazines with more than 40% of auto-citations: Enfermería Nefrológica (Spain), Enfermería Urológica (Spain) Enfermería Científica (Spain), Enfermería Radiológica (Spain), Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem (Brasil), Revista Latinoamericana de Enfermagem (Brasil), Revista Cubana de Enfermería (Cuba), Revista de Enfermería del IMSS (Mexico), Desarrollo Científico de Enfermería (Mexico), Temas de Enfermería Actualizados (Argentina), Revista Mexicana de Enfermería Cardiológica (Mexico), Actualizaciones de Enfermería (Colombia), Investigación y Educación en Enfermería (Colombia) y Ciencia y Enfermería (Chile).

Discussion

The results obtained by this study are compatible with the findings reported by other studies of the Group of Documentary Studies^3-5. There is a group of nursing magazines that are more quoted that the rest². Among then there are various titles that have the most impact and repercussion among the scientific community of the linguistic area of Spanish and Portuguese. Because of its closeness, the magazines with more repercussion are Index de Enfermería (Spain), Enfermería Clínica (Spain), Enfermería Intensiva (Spain), Desarrollo Científico de Enfermería (Mexico), Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem (Brasil), Matronas Profesión (Spain), Rol de Enfermería (Spain), Revista Latinoamericana de Enfermagem (Brasil) y Gerokomos (Spain).

However, considering the effect of auto-citations on repercussion, we see a curious phenomenon: specialized and Latin-American magazines trend to do more auto-citations that the rest. This means that the nursing community that publishes in these magazine trends to use what has been already in other magazines and their bibliographic referent. This is it for Enfermería Nefrológica (Spain), Enfermería Urológica (Spain), Enfermería Científica (Spain), Enfermería Radiológica (Spain), Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem (Brasil), Revista Latinoamericana de Enfermagem (Brasil), Revista Cubana de Enfermería (Cuba), Revista de Enfermería del IMSS (Mexico), Desarrollo Científico de Enfermería (Mexico), Temas de Enfermería Actualizados (Argentina), Revista Mexicana de Enfermería Cardiológica (Mexico), Actualizaciones de Enfermería (Colombia), Investigación y Educación en Enfermería (Colombia) y Ciencia y Enfermería (Chile). This somehow shows a sort of isolation in the consumption of information -authors quote the same magazine where they also publish- and there are extreme cases in which some magazines only quote themselves. -Revista Mexicana de Enfermería Cardiológica (Mexico), Ciencia y Enfermería (Chile) y Enfermería Radiológica (Spain)-.

The exchange of citations among source magazines represents 60,98%, so it could be affirmed that there is a transfer of knowledge in between nurses of the same linguistic area of Portuguese or Spanish. Nevertheless, this exchange is mainly in between magazines of the same geographic area: thus, Spanish magazines quote Spanish magazines and Brazilian magazines quote Brazilian magazines.

The impact of a magazine is not exclusively determined by the number of citations that it receives¹. When other variables are taken into account such as time, the amount of published articles or auto-citations; it occurs that magazines that receive many citations - e.g.: Rol de Enfermería (Spain) o Enfermería Científica (Spain)- have less Immediate Repercussion that other less quoted. Consequently, the study of the Historic Cuiden Impact relates with the scientific production of a magazine, and this as well with the years the magazine has been published - in relation with the studies of the national scientific production of the Spanish nursing-.

There are also other single nuances. Publishing in Desarrollo Científico de Enfermería (Mexico) makes the article visible and reprehensible in Spain and Mexico -according to the quoting guidelines previously observed-, while publishing in Temas de Enfermería Actualizados (Argentina) reduces the possibilities of being quoted, same as if it would be published in Revista Brasileira de Enfermagem (Brasil).

Apart from these appreciations, there are these days' changes in quoting criteria similar to those observed in the transition process of Spanish nursing at the end of the nineties when Cuiden provided free access to the Spanish nursing scientific production. Nowadays, Cuiden has extended its repertory of collections of magazines and it is possible to consult the nursing scientific production of the linguistic area of Spanish and Portuguese. We hope this as an effect in the behavioural consumption of information and in quoting.

Practical Implications

The findings of this study open to the authors an important range of possibilities regarding their decision of publishing an article in the magazine with higher diffusion. The linguistic area of Spanish and Portuguese offers magazines of different nationalities in which publishing an article guaranties its opportunities of being visible, read and subsequently quoted.

For Research Agencies these indicators allow them to evaluate candidates as well as research groups.

With this information, source magazines have the data they need to make up strategies in order to improve the distribution and impact of their product; for example they can encourage the inclusion of the magazine in international data bases with international access such as Cuiden.

References

1. Gálvez Toro, A; Hueso Montoro, C; Amezcua, M. Consumo de información de las revistas de enfermería del área lingüística del español y del portugués (año 2002). Desarrollo Científico de Enfermería, 2004; 12(3): 69-76.

2. Gálvez Toro, A. Hacia la universalización de enfermería del área lingüística del español y portugués. Desarrollo Científico de Enfermería, 2004; 12(3): 67-68.

3. Gálvez Toro, A; Hueso Montoro, C; Núñez Negrillo, AM; Amezcua, M. Impacto 2002 de las revistas de enfermería y su evolución en los últimos diez años. Index de Enfermería, 2003;XII(42):73-77.

4. Marañón, G. La medicina y nuestro tiempo. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1980 (1ª ed. 1954)

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6. Wayt Gibb. Ciencia del Tercer Mundo. Investigación y Ciencia, 1995; 231:70-79.

7. Gálvez Toro A, Salido Moreno MP. Fuentes documentales de los artículos de enfermería: revistas de enfermería citadas por las enfermeras. Enfermería Científica, 1999; 202-203:68-73.

8. Gálvez Toro A, Fernández Fernández E, Alonso Chaves F, Gualda Martín I, García Ortega A. Índices e indicadores bibliométricos de doce revistas de enfermería españolas en el año 1993. Garnata'91, 1997; 11: 53-63.

9. Gálvez Toro A. Un modelo explicativo de la pauta de citación de las revistas de enfermería españolas. Enfermería Clínica, 2002; 12(5):210-16.

10. Gálvez Toro A. Producción Científica de la Enfermería Española. Evaluación de los años 1993-1994. Index de Enfermería, 1996; V(16-17):17-21.