Kaigorodova T.V., Zimina Ye.Yi., Kirsanova Ye.V., Ivanov A.V.
Federal Research Institute for Health Organization and Informatics of Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation, Moscow

Summary. Study of the use of the World Health Organization papers in Russian peer-reviewed journals and other publications through a quotation analysis was conducted in this report. Materials and Methods: Predominantly, publications on medical sciences and public health were included. Publications made in 2000-8 were enrolled. The Journals selected for this study corresponded to the notion of “peer-reviewed journal”: specifically in Russian scientific community it means approbation by Supreme Certifying Board (SCB). All in all 74 Journals were included, 64 of them were taken from the SCB list of Journals on medicine. 2-4 representative Journals on every major scientific trend were selected from the afore-mentioned list. Besides this, 10 Journals relevant to public and social health that were beyond the mentioned list were also in included this study.

All in all, 2081 Journal issues containing 33847 pieces were analyzed. Only 46.87% of thus published pieces were taken notice of. The latter pieces were investigated for the citation of WHO papers. To this end, the key words characteristic of the WHO publications were established and then implemented for screening of all pieces’ references in Russian, as well as in English. The WHO papers revealed were then specified for bibliographic status and for further content analysis.

Results: 1827 Journal articles containing all in all 2801 reference notes on WHO papers were identified. The theme of “non-infectious diseases” was highly predominant in the structure of subject matters in quotation of WHO papers. It was twice as much as the second matter in consequence which read: “health care for maternity and childhood”. The third consequent theme read as “infectious diseases”. The fourth, fifth, and sixth were, accordingly, “pharmaceuticals”, “world systems of public health”, “diseases prevention”.

On the theme of “non-infectious diseases”, the topic of “cardiovascular disturbances” occupied the first place with a large separation from the second consequent topic on this theme, that of “psychic health”. Other topics on this largest theme were much less significant in number of quotation.

In the bibliographic status of quoted papers, dominated mainly analytical reviews and techniques’ guidelines. The forms of serial technical reports, guidelines, textbooks, monographs were mostly presented. Edition: “Serial technical reports of the WHO” was the leader of quoted papers in the group of analytical reviews (nearly third of them were in Russian translation). Techniques’ guidelines were to succeed in number. The third were monographs: the quoted monographs of European Observation Board on world systems of public health and policies were predominant in number, monographs of International Agency on investigations for cancer and WHO monographs on cardiology were also very popular.

The reference notes revealed the WHO papers publication period in RUSSIA as relating mostly to the decade of 90^th of the 20^th century, and to the first decade of the 21^st century, the stretch of time from 1995 to 2005 was in most intensive use in publications’ quoting. A peculiar thing in Russian publications of 2000-9 years was that the WHO papers were quoted - at least scarcely - the same year that they had been published in every single year of this stretch of time and there was marked increase in 2007 and 2008.

Discussion: It is remarkable that all the quoted WHO papers were available online on its website. This implies that online accessibility of information can constitutively accelerate its path to a user. On the whole, the use of online resources is greatly and steadily enlarging.

Circa 30% of the used papers were in Russian translation, while among monographs of the European Observation Board on world systems of public health and policies the figure exceeded 50%. The most highly quoted edition: “Serial technical reports of the WHO” was predominantly used through the reports that had been published in Russian by “Medicina” publishers, but only in the 90-s of the 20^th century at which time this publishers’ house had been translating in Russian factually all those WHO reports. It is noteworthy that since this procedures has been suspended, the frequency of quotation for this part has declined dramatically. This fact emphasized the notion that native translations normally increased significantly the use of externally attracted data.

Conclusion: In general, this study showed that quotation analysis can be used for evaluation of propagation of information in world scientific community.

Key words. Scientific medical information, quotation analysis, propagation of information, evaluation, Russian medical journals.

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