Objective: The main aim of the study is to assess the developing situation of the articles published in the journal Atención Primaria in relation to the original articles included in the same journal. There are secondary aims of describing the amount of self-quotation, the profession of the authors, their geographical distribution and their use of bibliographic references.
Design: A descriptive analysis of the authors and bibliographic references in the original articles. SITE. Publications and research in Primary Care.
Main measurements and results: All the original articles published in the journal Atención Primaria during its first seven years (1984-1990). Gathering of data from the original articles (the number of authors, province of their place of work, titles, total number of references, references from Atención Primaria, the number of self-quotations, etc.) In the seven years studied, 295 original articles have been published by 1467 authors, 44% of whom are family doctors. The average number of authors per article was 5. There are twelve Spanish provinces from which no-one has published. Altogether 4,908 bibliographic references, an average of 16.6 per article, have been used. The number of references from the journal itself rose steadily from 1% in 1984 to 11.7% in 1988, but went down to 10.3% in 1990. 52% of the bibliographic references were in Castilian and 42.6% in English.
Conclusion: The journal Atención Primaria is often quoted in original articles published in the same journal. The number of authors and references per original article is high but stable.