Scientific production and bibliometric impact of a representative group of Spanish internists with established research careers

Objective To study the temporal evolution of the bibliometric indices of internists with established research experience in order to predict the future behavior of researchers and to assess whether output focused on a specific area of internal medicine helps obtain greater visibility than in general internal medicine. Materials and methods We analyzed a representative group of members of the Spanish Society of Internal Medicine (SEMI) based on data obtained from the Web of Science. As an indicator of productivity, we analyzed the number of articles published. As impact indicators, we studied the impact factor (IF), the number of citations and the h -index. Results We analyzed 42 internists, with a mean experience of 30 years and a total of 6655 publications. The mean (SD) number of studies was 158 (96), the number of citations was 2850 (2865), the IF was 711 (549) and the h -index was 25 (11). These figures were higher for the specialist internists than for the general internists. There was a good relationship between the impact and productivity indicators ( R 2 = 0.61–0.89) and a poor relationship between these indicators and the years of experience ( R 2 = 0.13–0.19). The temporal evolution of these indicators for each individual researcher and for all researchers as a whole was adjusted to a second-degree polynomial model, with the h -index having the highest R 2 values. Conclusions The h -index is the factor that had the best adjustment and least variability and could therefore help predict the future scientific output and impact of internists. The specialist researchers achieved greater visibility than the general internists.