Bibliometric study on SCI articles on public health and preventive medicine written by professionals in some universities in China, 2008-2012

Objective To examine publication status and trend of public health and preventive medicine-related papers covered by Science Citation Index(SCI) among professionals from some universities in China for the improvement of academic practice in the research field.Methods The SCI articles published from 2008 through 2012 were retrieved through Web of Science and only the articles written or co-written by the authors from the 11 universities categorized as the 10 top-ranking in research capability of public health and preventive medicine by National Degree and Graduate Education Development Center of Ministry of Education in 2012 were included in the analysis.Results Totally 1 873 published SCI articles on public health and preventive medicine were written by the professionals from the 11 universities, of which 939(50.13%) were written by the professionals as the first authors, with an annual average growth rate of 26.08% during the period.Of the 1 873 articles, 181(19.28%) were published by the professionals from Huazhong University of Science and Technology and 307(32.69%) reported epidemiologic or biostatistics studies in public health and preventive medicine.Conclusion There were disparities in the number, second-level field, and academic impact among the published SCI articles written by the authors form the 11 top-ranking universities in research capability of public health and preventive medicine.