Articles published in index-linked Ibero-American journals of urology

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1 Rev Mex Urol 13;73(6): ÓRGANO OFICIAL DE DIFUSIÓN DE LA SOCIEDAD MEXICANA DE UROLOGÍA Original article Articles published in index-linked Ibero-American journals of urology A. M. Díaz-Hunga, H. A. García-Perdomob,*, L. M. Mejíac and J. Carbonell-Gonzálezd a Speciality Residency, Hospital Universitario del Valle, Cali, Colombia b and Clinical Epidemiology, Teaching Staff of the Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia c Internship, Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia d, Teaching staff of the Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia KEYWORDS Research design; ; Article; Ibero-America; Publication; Epidemiology; Colombia. Abstract Aims: To describe the articles published in Ibero-American journals of urology within the time frame of January 1, 8 to December 31, 1. Methods: A descriptive, observational study was conducted. A search was carried out in relation to the Ibero-American journals of urology that are referenced in Scielo, Latindex, and PubMed, and 8 were found that met the inclusion criteria. The characteristics of each journal were reviewed along with their published articles from January 8 to December 1. Results: Two journals from Spain, from Mexico, and one each from the countries of Colombia,, Chile, and Brazil were found. During the year 8, a median of 9 articles were published (range: 3-1); in 9, 7 articles (range: 7-1); in 1, 57 articles (range: 9-146); in 11, 57 articles (range:17-73), and in 1, 6 articles (range:13-57). In regard to experimental articles, during the year 8, a median of articles (range: 1-3) were published; in 9, 1.5 articles (range: 1-3); in 1, 1.7 articles (range:1-3); in 11, articles (range: -8), and in 1, 1.5 articles (range: -4). With respect to systematic review articles, a median of.5 articles (range: -) were published in 8; in 9,.5 articles (range: -1); in 1,.5 articles (range: -1); in 11, there were no articles published, and in 1,.75 articles (range: 1-). Conclusions: There are few index-linked journals of urology in Ibero-America and the number of published articles decreased from 8 to 9, but remained stable up to 1; however, the majority of the articles published are observational. * Corresponding author at: Carrera 35 N 3A-38, Apto. 31, Cali, Colombia. Telephone: Cell phone: Herney. garcia@correounivalle.edu.co (H. A. García-Perdomo) see front matter 13.. Publicado por Elsevier México. Todos los derechos reservados.

2 38 A.M. Díaz-Hung et al Palabras clave Diseño de investigación; ; Artículo; Iberoamérica; Publicación; Epidemiología; Colombia. La publicación en las revistas urológicas iberoamericanas indexadas Resumen Objetivo: Describir las publicaciones de las revistas urológicas iberoamericanas durante el periodo comprendido entre enero 1 de 8 a diciembre 31 de 1. Métodos: Se realizó un estudio observacional descriptivo. Se buscaron las revistas urológicas iberoamericanas referenciadas en Scielo, Latindex y PubMed; 8 cumplían los criterios de inclusión. Se revisaron las características de cada revista y sus publicaciones anuales desde enero de 8 a diciembre de 1. Resultados: Se encontraron revistas españolas, mexicanas, y una de cada uno de los siguientes países: Colombia,, Chile y Brasil. Durante el año 8, se publicó una mediana de 9 artículos (3-1); en 9, 7 artículos con un rango de 7 a 1; en 1, 57 artículos (9-146); en 11, 57 artículos (17-73) y en 1, 6 artículos (13-57). Durante el año 8 se publicó una mediana de artículos experimentales (1-3); en 9, 1.5 artículos con un rango de 1 a 3; en 1, 1.7 artículos (1-3); en 11, artículos (-8) y en 1, 1.5 artículos (-4). Durante el año 8 se publicó una mediana de.5 artículos de revisión sistemática (-); en 9,.5 artículos (-1); en 1,.5 artículos (-1); en 11, no hubo artículos y en 1,.75 artículos (1-). Conclusiones: Pocas revistas indexadas de urología en Iberoamérica, con una cantidad de artículos publicados que disminuyó de 8 a 9, sin embargo al 1 han permanecido estables, aunque la mayoría son de tipo observacional. Introduction Methods Evidence-based medicine has been defined as the conscious, explicit, and judicious use of the best evidence. The advance of technology and the magnitude of information that a physician must know to be able to base his or her decisions on the best evidence has made it necessary to systematize the search. The literature is reviewed critically and this knowledge is applied to achieve better results. The aim of the diffusion of this way of practicing medicine is to add to the clinical judgment that is achieved through years of experience, a practical and systematic manner of confronting the medical problem and reducing the possibility of error when making decisions. 1 The quality of some highly prestigious international journals such as The, European, BJU, and, has been evaluated and it was found that only 15.3% of the articles published in 5 had a high level of evidence. Sur et al., carried out a survey on the members of the American Urological Association (AUA) that revealed that the urologists agree that the application of evidence-based medicine improves the care given to patients (median score 9/1) and surgical results (median score 8/1), but 57% of them felt that the level of evidence of the publications of the urologic journals was not high. 3 There are no studies in the literature that evaluate the quality of Ibero-American publications, and with this in mind, the aim of this article was to describe the characteristics of the Ibero-American urologic journals and their articles within the time frame of January 1, 8 to December 31, 1. A descriptive, observational study was conducted. Together, the evaluators carried out a web search of the Ibero- American urologic societies linked to the American Confederation of (ACU) through their web page and by directly contacting members of the ACU. Next, urology journals were identified that belonged to each of the Ibero-American urologic societies referenced in Scielo, Latindex, and MedLine. The Ibero-American urology journals that had a greater impact factor according to SCImago were also identified. In accordance with the abovementioned, the following list of urologic societies and indexed journals were found: Urologic societies of the ACU Federación ; Sociedad de ; Sociedad Boliviana ; Sociedad Chilena ; Sociedad Cubana ; Sociedad Dominicana ; Sociedad Ecuatoriana ; Asociación Española ; Asociación Guatemalteca ; Sociedad de ; Colegio Mexicano ; Sociedad Panameña ; Sociedad Paraguaya ; Asociación Portuguesa ; Sociedad Uruguaya de ; Sociedad Venezolana ; Sociedad Brasilera ; Sociedad Peruana ; Sociedad ; Asociación de Médicos Urólogos de Costa Rica; Asociación Salvadoreña de. Latindex (Regional System of On-line Information for Scientific Journals in Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, and Portugal) Up-dated to August / 1.

3 Articles published in index-linked Ibero-American journals of urology 39 Table 1 General characteristics of the Ibero-American urology journals (n=8) Journal name Country of origin Year founded Existence (years) Annual editions SCImago Journal Ranking Indicator Spain Archivos Españoles Spain Boletín del Colegio Mexicano Mexico NA Brazil NA Chilena Chile NA Mexico NA Colombia NA NA: does not apply. Archivos Españoles ; Boletín del Colegio Mexicano ; ; Chilena ; ; ; *; * Medline-PubMed (Referenced journals in the NCBI database) ; ; Archivos Españoles. SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) braz j urol (Q.93); (Q3.48); Archivos Españoles (Q3.4) A review of the characteristics of the Ibero-American journals and published articles within the time frame of January 1, 8 to December 31, 1 was carried out. The characteristics were described of each journal and their published articles such as: country of origin, date founded, number of yearly editions, impact factor, quantity of yearly publications, quantity of observational, experimental, systematic review articles, and meta-analyses published yearly, among other characteristics. Experimental studies on animals, theme reviews, and biomedical studies, as well as journals that were not indexlinked in the selected databases or that access to them was not available were excluded. Excluded journals: Revisiones en (Spain); Diálisis y Transplante (Spain) (Q4.5); de la Asociación Española de Enfermería en ; Integrada y de Investigación (Spain); Contemporánea (Brazil); Venezolana ; Internacional de Andrología (Spain) (Q4.7). Results A total of 8 journals were found: journals from Spain, from Mexico, and one each from the following countries: Colombia,, Chile, and Brazil. Their mean existence since foundation was 43 years (11 88) and a production of 5 annual editions (3 1). Their mean SJR index was.69 ( ), although SJR was only identified in 3 journals (, Archivos Españoles, and the ) (table 1). In the year 8 a median of 8 articles (13-18) was published, in 9 a median of 6.5 (4-13), in 1 a median of 8.5 (18-144), in 11 a median of 6 (17-73), and in 1, a median of 3.5 (-74). Table shows the total number of articles published in the time frame observed. The majority of the published articles were descriptive, observational studies. There were few experimental and Table Total number of articles 8-1 (n=1.716) Urol* Archivos Boletín Argentinian Chilean Mexican Colombian Observational Experimental Systematic reviews 3 4 Meta-analyses 3 Total Urol:.

4 31 A.M. Díaz-Hung et al systematic review articles or meta-analyses. The journal that published the most experimental articles and metaanalyses was the. Systematic reviews/meta-analyses, though scarce, were published by the,, and the. Table shows the total number of research articles and graphs 1-3 show the description of the number of articles of each journal per year from 8 to 1. In addition, it was found that the majority of the journals publish articles on oncology and general urology (graph 4). Discussion The concept of evidence-based medicine was developed by a group of internists and clinical epidemiologists led by Gordon Guyatt from the School of Medicine of McMaster University in Canada. 4 Based on the scientific rigor of study design, hierarchical classification scales of evidence can be constructed from which recommendations are established for adopting a given medical procedure or sanitary operation. 5 The identified journals include some of the countries of Ibero-America and cover the majority of the Ibero-American scientific societies of urology, and these countries are: Spain, Mexico, Colombia,, Chile, and Brazil. The journals were founded more than 1 years ago and are associated with more prestigious journals founded around the same time. They produce a mean 5 editions yearly; this is fewer than the highly prestigious journals, such as the,, and BJU, among others, that publish one edition per month. SCImago Journal Ranking, 6 developed by the SCImago Research Group, is a site that collects scientific indicators of journals and countries, elaborated from information provided by the SCOPUS database of Elsevier B.V., developing a ranking of journals and countries based on the application of the Page Rank algorithm used by Google, which shows their visibility from 1966 to the present day, and the SCImago Journal Ranking Indicator, which measures journal impact, expressed as the mean number of weighted cites received in the selected year by the documents published in the journal in the previous 3 years. 7 Of the Ibero-American journals, only the,, and Archivos Españoles are ranked in the top 5 of the best urologic journals in the world, according to the SCImago Journal Ranking, in positions 5, 9, and 3, with a SJR indicator of.41,.8, and.187, respectively. The study carried out by Borawski et al., in which the level of evidence of the published studies in 4 of the most prestigious urologic journals (The, European, BJU, ) was evaluated, found that of 3 studies published in 5, only 15.3% had a high level of evidence (I or II). According to Scales et al., who described the statistical methods used in the urologic literature in 4 of the leading urology journals, 94% of the 97 articles reviewed corresponded to descriptive studies and only 1.3% to randomized clinical trials. 8,9 In our study, of the 1,716 studies published between 8-1, only 3.1% corresponded to a high level of evidence (experimental, systematic review, meta-analysis), and it was the that more frequently published the studies with a higher level of evidence. It was also found that the published studies on oncology and general urology were the most frequently published in the Ibero-American journals, with 69 and 45 articles reviewed, respectively. This concurs with the international publications and the interests of urologists in general, in which oncology is the topic covered in 6%-49.% of the, 9-11 published articles in the urology journals. The number of Ibero-American journals and the quantity of them that are index-linked to some of the databases mentioned in the present article is striking. Nevertheless, it is also important to state that only 3 of them actually have a relatively high impact factor that allows them to compete Archivos Boletín del Españoles Colegio Mexicano Archivos Españoles Boletín del Colegio Mexicano Figure 1 Observational studies (descriptive and analytic) 8-1. Figure Experimental studies 8-1.

5 Articles published in index-linked Ibero-American journals of urology Archivos Españoles Boletín del Colegio Mexicano Number of articles Oncology Female Endourology Pediatrics Trauma Transplant Neurourology Andrology General Lithiasis Archivos Españoles Boletín Colegio Mexicano Intern J Chilena Figure 3 Systematic review/meta-analysis studies 8-1. Figure 4 Illustration of articles by sub-speciality 8-1. with the journals of prestige. This is a factor to be kept in mind for future studies and scientific society interventions and for the urologists themselves to determine the investment of resources in journals that have a greater scientific impact. The present study, despite being a descriptive and observational one, demonstrates how the majority of the studies are observational, and that even though they are important for the creation of hypotheses, they have a lower quality level of evidence and contribute little to changing conducts and procedures in the care of hospital patients, as well as in the public health sector. The present study offers important tools for the editors of the biomedical journals, and the scientific societies in urology to carry out activities that will aid in improving the scientific quality of the Ibero-American publications. Conclusions There were few index-linked urology journals in Ibero- America, with a quantity of published articles that has remained stable over time, but with a low level of evidence. The majority of articles are observational and deal mainly with oncology and general urology. Conflict of interest The authors state that there is no conflict of interest. Financial disclosure References 1. Sackett D, Rosenberg W. On the needs for evidence based medicine. J Public Health Medicine 1995;17(3): Borawski KM, Norris RD, Fesperman SF, et al. Levels of Evidence in the Urological Literature. The 7;178(4): Sur RL, Scales Jr CD, Preminger GM, et al. Evidence-Based Medicine: A Survey of American Urological Association Members. The 6;176(3): Evidence-Based Medicine Working Group. Evidence-based medicine. A new approach to teaching the practice of medicine. JAMA 199;68: Jovell AJ, Navarro-Rubio MD. Evaluación de la evidencia científica. Med Clin (Barc) 1995;15: González-Pereira B, Guerrero-Bote VP, Moya-Anegón F. A new approach to the metric of journals scientific prestige: The SJR indicator. Informetrics 1;4(3): Hirsch JE. An index to quantify an individual s scientific research output. PNAS 1 (46): Scales CD Jr, Norris RD, Peterson BL, et al. Clinical research and statistical methods in the urology literature. The 5;174(4): Hennessey K, Afshar K, MacNeily A. The top cited articles in urology. Can Urol Assoc J 9;3(4): De Sio M, Yakoubi R, De Nunzio C, et al. Reporting quality of abstracts presented at the European Association of meeting: a critical assessment. The 1;188(5): Scales CD Jr, Norris RD, Keitz SA, et al. A critical assessment of the quality of reporting of randomized, controlled trials in the urology literature. The 7;177(3): No financial support was received in relation to this article.