Where are italian anesthesiologists and intensive care specialists publishing? A quantitative analysis of publication activity

INTRODUCTION: With the continuing worldwide shortage of anesthesiologists, the demands of clinical duties allow very little time for research activities. Every dedicated biomedical center should provide doctors and scientists with the proper environment to facilitate education, clinical practice and research activities and promote publication in international peer-review journals. METHODS: In this observational study, the Scopus database was searched for publications ( 2004-2009 ) to identify the most prolific authors among Italian anesthesiologists and intensive care specialists working in Italy. We then identified the journals that most frequently hosted Italian writers. RESULTS: The top 20 authors published between 30 and 76 papers each (mean 51) in the last 5 years. Intensive Care Medicine (112 papers, 14%), Minerva Anestesiologica (92 papers, 11%), Critical Care Medicine (55 papers, 7%), Journal of Cardiothoracic and Vascular Anesthesia (32 papers, 4%), and European Journal of Anesthesiology (32 papers, 4%) most frequently hosted Italian authors. DISCUSSION: Despite its obvious limitations such as the choice of a single database (Scopus), the absence of important qualitative indicators (e.g. impact factor, citation index), the inclusion of any type of publication (a letter to the editor or reviews counted like a randomized controlled study) and the possible exclusion of important scholars, this is the most up-to-date and comprehensive attempt to perform a quantitative analysis of publishing in Italy. Each of the 20 indexed Journals that most frequently hosted Italian authors only accepts manuscripts in English and has impact factor.