Background In the past, authors from a few countries dominated the publication of articles in dermatologic journals that were cited. The growth of dermatology in many additional countries has set the stage for a broader national representation of the authorship of the most frequently cited dermatologic articles.
Objective To quantify changes in the number and proportion of citations and articles credited to authors from various countries from 1981 to 1996.
Design We obtained a citation database from the Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia, Pa. From this database, we quantified the average number of articles and citations according to the year of publication, journal, and the countries from which authors came.
Setting Dermatology journals.
Subjects All articles published in 24 dermatology journals between 1981 and 1996.
Main Outcome Measures Country of origin of articles and number of citations of these articles.
Results Authors from 121 countries were credited in whole or in part with authorship of original articles. Ten countries accounted for 82% of all articles published as original articles and 87% of citations to these articles. From 1981 to 1996, the proportion of citations attributed to most western European except Scandinavian countries grew significantly (P<.05,t test), but the proportion credited to authors from the United States fell significantly (P<.05,t test).
Conclusions International representation of author-cited articles appearing in the dermatology literature is increasing. The growth of scholarly contributions has been especially great for authors from western Europe except Scandinavia.
