Ten years of research for the Pacific Islands Families Study: a comparative review of publications.

In 2000, the Pacific Islands Families Study (PIFS) initiated research into developmental pathways of health outcomes for Pacific children and families. Not only was the study premised on addressing the gap in longitudinal research of Pacific peoples, it also aimed to increase Pacific-researcher capacity. After ten years of operation, this paper reviews the journal publications and Pacific authorship from the PIFS. The PIFS team published 55 journal articles in 29 peer reviewed journals. Forty-four (80.0%) of these articles had a Pacific author, including seven (12.7%) where the first-author was Pacific. Most articles used cross-sectional data (n = 38, 69.1%) and a quarter used longitudinal data (n = 15, 27.3%). Eighteen (62.1%) of the 29 journals that PIFS articles were published in were registered on the Journal Citations Report database, with 2009 5-year journal impact factors ranging from 1.064 to 6.504. The PIFS achieved a similar number of publications compared with the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (DMHDS, n = 48) and Christchurch Health and Development Study (CHDS, n = 67). Further analysis, showed that the PIFS (27.3%) had the lowest proportion of publications using longitudinal data compared to the DMHDS (n = 37.5%) and CHDS (65.7%). This review provides a stocktake of publications in the first decade of the PIFS and shows that although the development of Pacific-researcher capacity has been promising, greater attention must be given to increasing first-authorship of academic writing and to utilising longitudinal data to better understand the origins of health status of Pacific peoples.