Thirty years of family medicine publications in Israel (1975-2004): what, where, and how much?

• Published in: Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine Vol. 22; no. 1; pp. 57 - 61
• Main Authors: Pshetizky, Y, Tandeter, H, Tabenkin, H, Vinker, S, Lahad, A, Karkabi, K, Kitai, E, Hermoni, D, Shvartzman, P
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01-01-2009
• Subjects: Biomedical Research - history; Family Practice - history; History, 20th Century; History, 21st Century; Humans; Israel; Journal Impact Factor; Manuscripts as Topic - history; Periodicals as Topic - history; Publications - history; Time Factors; Israel
• ISSN: 1557-2625; 1558-7118
• DOI: 10.3122/jabfm.2009.01.070035

Departments of family medicine in Israel were established in the 1970s. Until now, little or no effort has been made to characterize the productivity of Israeli board-certified family medicine physicians in publishing peer-reviewed scientific articles.
Publications were identified by 2 methods. First, a PubMed search by names of current and past faculty from all the departments of family medicine in Israel (1975-2004). Secondly, all of the departments in Israel forwarded a list of all publications by their faculty (including those that do not appear in Medline). The abstracts of all publications were extracted and were separately and blindly evaluated by 2 reviewers. Publications were classified according to Medline citation, language, journal impact factor, and publication type.
A total of 1165 publications were identified and analyzed. More than half of the articles were published in the last 10 years. Seventy-two percent were cited in Medline. Publications in English encompassed 64.7% of the publications, Hebrew 34.6%, and 0.7% other. Approximately 6% of the articles were published in journals with impact factor > or =3, with research articles accounting for 46.9%. The publication output of family medicine in Israel averaged 85.4 publications per 1000 family medicine physicians per year. Almost 70% of the articles were published in non-family medicine journals. Academically affiliated, board-certified family medicine physicians published at higher rates, averaging 334.3 per 1000 academic family medicine physicians per year (data available for 2000-2004 only).
Publishing and research are important to the development of family medicine as an academic profession, in which Israeli family physicians show significant productivity.