Introduction. Drug dependence is a big problem in the European Union (EU). Research on drug dependence has increased in the last decades in Spain. A method to evaluate scientific productivity in a specific field consists on the analysis of publications indexed in bibliographic databases. Main goal of this study was to evaluate Spanish scientific publications on drug dependence during 25 years and to compare them with publications in the EU in the same period.
Methods. The Spanish publications in the field of drug dependence and drug abuse indexed in PsycINFO published form 1976 to 2000 were retrieved and analysed (evolution through years, authors, number of authors, journals, topics and language of publication) and then compared with data from the rest of EU countries (14 countries). A descriptive statistical analysis was performed and graphical displays were prepared.
Main results. A total of 4,825 articles were retrieved; 501 (10,4%) from Spain and 4,324 from other EU countries. Spanish articles increased from 15 (4,8%) in 1976-1980 to 192 (12,4%) in 1996-2000 (Spain multiplied by 12,8 while the EU by 4,6). Only two countries (UK and Germany) published more than Spain. Main language in EU was English (n=3,794); publications in Spanish increased dramatically in the last years (to n=329); authors that published in Spanish were mainly from Spain. Thirty journals published more than 30 articles from EU; 4 are published in Spain: Actas Lusoespañolas de Neurología, Psiquiatría y Ciencias Afines (50), Adicciones (49), Psiquis (36) and Anales de Psiquiatría (25). Only one Spanish author was among those who published more than 20 articles (18 were from UK, 3 from Sweden, 2 from Germany, 1 from Finland). More detailed results and analyses will be presented in tables and figures (n. of authors, authors, topics, co-authorship, journals, …).
Discussion, conclusions.
PsycINFO is a useful database to compare scientific productivity between countries as it includes author addresses in all records.
These results confirm the tendency observed in other studies and show that Spanish research on drug dependence has increased; this increase is bigger than the increase observed in the EU. Spain is among EU countries with a greater number of publications on drug dependence. Language was Spanish in more than 50 % publications form Spain, while EU countries published mainly in English. Spanish journals have published a lot of EU articles. At least four Spanish journals have to be considered in health libraries dealing with drug dependence.
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