The scientific production of full professors of the faculdade de medicina da universidade de São Paulo: a view of the period of 2001-2006

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION: The scientific production of institutions of higher education, as well as the dissemination and use of this published work by peer institutions, can be assessed by means of quantitative and qualitative measurements. This type of analysis can also serve as the basis of further academic actions. Variables such as the type of evaluation, the number of faculty members and the decision to include or exclude researchers who are not professors are difficult to measure when comparing different schools and institutions. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this study was to assess the scientific production of tenured faculty from the Universidade de São Paulo, Faculdade de Medicina performed from 2001 to 2006. METHODS: Medline/PubMed database was considered and the Impact factors (IFs - Journal Citation Report, 2006) and the number of generated citations (Web of Science/ISI Thomson) were also evaluated. RESULTS: The analysis of the scientific production of 66 full professors (level MS-6) revealed 1,960 scientific articles published in 630 scientific journals, of which 31.3 percent were Brazilian and 68.7 percent were from international sources. Among these, 47 percent of the articles were published in 62.9 percent of the journals with IFs above 10, although 16.4 percent of the journals did not have assigned IF values. We verified that 45 percent of the published articles received 9,335 citations (average of 11 + 17), with the majority of these (8,968 citations) appearing in international scientific journals. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that it is possible to analyze the scientific production of a learning institution by the number of papers published by full professors, taking into account not only their academic position and influence, but also the fact that publication is an opportunity to stimulate joint projects with other members of the same institution.