In the nearly fifty years of history of Anales de Pediatría, its different editorial teams have been working to streamline its management, improve content quality and ensure its international visibility and diffusion.1,2 Thus, nowadays the journal fulfill the selection criteria of the most demanding databases, and at the moment it is the only Spanish journal in the field of paediatrics (except for Cirugía pediátrica) included in the Medline database, and the only one found in the Web of Science (WoS). It is also one of the 24 Spanish medical journals that is indexed both in the major biomedical databases in Spain (IBECS and MEDES) and abroad (Pubmed-Medline and Embase), as well as in multidisciplinary citation databases (WoS and Scopus).3

The current circumstances result from ongoing efforts in improving the quality of the journal, which require up-to-date data on the performance of the journal and its behaviour among the journals that constitute its competition.

One of the most frequently used approaches to obtain this information is the application of bibliometric indicators.4 Our journal has published a considerable number of articles that use this approach to analyse different aspects of its performance, both as a communication medium and in terms of its contents. Chief among them are the works that assess the journal's productivity in different periods, which afford data on its evolution that span nearly 25 years of its history,5–7 and others that have determined the position that it occupies among Spanish paediatrics publications in various databases.8

Such evaluations are useful in two ways: on the one hand, their results help guide the decision-making of different editorial management teams, and, on the other, they inform readers of the potential of a journal. However, due to their intrinsic nature these studies have to be repeated periodically, especially when a significant change takes place in the conditions of the editorial environment.

The period analysed in this article (2010–2014) is of particular interest in that it covers the first five years since the inclusion of Anales de Pediatría in the WoS, which follows the flow of the “scientific mainstream”, and tracks the publication of the first indicators of its impact in the 2009 Journal Citation Report (JCR). These events have been a turning point for the journal, as these sources serve as a reference in the process of assessing the research outcomes of scientists,9 research groups and institutions, making Anales de Pediatría more appealing to authors that are considering where to publish their work. The main objective of this study was to determine the usage of this journal by Spanish paediatricians, the collective that is its main target, and to find out where they publish their work otherwise, as well as the characteristics of competing journals.

The specific aims of this work were:

• 1.

  To analyse the volume and characteristics of the Spanish paediatric research included in the WoS.

• 2.

  To analyse the volume and characteristics of the work published in Anales de Pediatría and determine its contribution to the diffusion of Spanish research in paediatrics.

• 3.

  To describe the characteristics of the journals that publish Spanish paediatrics research at the international level.

The Spanish scientific output was retrieved using the Science Citation Index of the WoS. We selected the works (excepting meeting abstracts and proceedings papers) published between 2010 and 2014 that were assigned to the subject category of Paediatrics and in which Spain was featured in the Address field. We found the works published in Anales de Pediatría by narrowing the search to this journal.

To assess the Spanish scientific output and the output published in Anales de Pediatría, we analysed their number of publications and document type, and put the results in context by obtaining data for the number and document type of the works indexed by the WoS in the Paediatrics category for the period under study. We then focused on original and review articles (which we will refer to henceforth as “articles”), analysing their publication dates and their impact, using as indicators the mean number of citations per article and the h-index10 obtained from the citation report provided by the WoS.

For the journals that published Spanish paediatric research works, we described their number, output and degree of specialisation. For the latter variable, we classified journals in the following two categories based on their titles and editorial policy: general paediatrics journals and paediatric specialty journals.

For the general paediatrics journals, with which Anales de Pediatría competes to attract original articles, we described the number of published articles by language, impact factor, quartile and ranking in the category of Paediatrics of the Journal Citation Reports of 2012 (this year was selected because it was in the middle of the study period), and the type of access to the content of the journals. For the latter, we obtained the information from the journal, and classified journals into the following categories: subscription-based access, subscription-based with open access after an embargo period, and open access to texts. Within the open access category, we specified whether the journal used the “author pays” publication model.

The Spanish output in paediatrics amounts to 2.8% of the works in the paediatrics category of the WoS for this period, a figure above the 1.52% corresponding to the 2001–2005 period,11 and we attribute the increased visibility of Spanish works in this database to the inclusion of Anales de Pediatría, a journal that conveys 35% of this output.

While the document type pattern of the world paediatrics output is similar to that of the indexed contents of the WoS in the 2004–2007 period,12 the Spanish paediatrics output and the works published in Anales de Pediatría had particular patterns when it came to letters and reviews.

Thus, the proportion of letters in the Spanish paediatric output (19.2%) is much higher than that in the world output (7.3%), which is probably influenced by the amount of letters published in Anales de Pediatría, which account for 71.7% of the total number of Spanish letters. The publication of a high percentage of letters in Anales de Pediatría has been observed in the past, as it amounted to 33.9% of works in the 2003–2009 period.7

As for reviews, their proportion of the Spanish paediatrics output was half of the proportion of the world output, and in the case of Anales de Pediatría, this type of document was nearly nonexistent, which diverges from the 2003 to 2009 period, in which 6.7% of the articles published by the journals were categorised as reviews.

The main focus of the study was the publication of original and review articles, as these are the works that WoS considers of highest academic interest and they are the citable items par excellence used to calculate the denominator of the journal impact factor.13 In the WoS, these two document types constitute 79.7% of the world paediatrics output and 71.7% of the Spanish paediatrics output.

The Spanish articles in paediatrics included in the WoS are just the tip of the iceberg of the total Spanish output in the field, as it only amounts to 29.1% of the articles on paediatrics-related subjects published in the 2006–2010 period included in the Spanish IME and IBECS databases and the multidisciplinary SCI and Scopus databases.9

Original and review articles accounted for 45.3% of the works published in Anales de Pediatría, a figure that is 24% less than the percentage of the Spanish articles in paediatrics published in the WoS and 27.5% less than the percentage of the world paediatrics output.

The percentage of articles published in Anales de Pediatría has fluctuated through time; it was 41% in the 1994–2000 period5 and 54.8% in the 2003–2009 period,7 with current figures showing a decrease in the number of articles published in the journal compared to the period immediately preceding it.

We also assessed the contribution of Anales de Pediatría in terms of the frequency of citations. In this regard, our results show that while the journal contributes to the diffusion of 22.7% of Spanish articles, the number of citations of works published in the journal account for only 4.7% of the total citations of Spanish articles in paediatrics published in the WoS. In fact, the mean number of citations for articles published in Anales de Pediatría was 1.03, while the mean for the Spanish paediatric output overall is of 4.97.

Spanish authors chose 106 journals out of the 222 included in the JCR for the publication of their works during the period under study, which shows a wide spread. However, the distribution of works based on productivity shows a core of 11 journals that were favoured by Spanish authors and account for 50% of the overall output.

Overall, the profile of the Spanish paediatrics output is specialised, as 61.7% of the articles were published in paediatric subspecialty journals.

Anales de Pediatría plays an important role in the publication of Spanish paediatrics articles. In fact, authors have chosen it one out of four times they selected a journal included in the WoS. When this role is considered in the context of articles published in general journals, which is our journal's natural niche due to its editorial policy, this contribution rises to 60% of the articles.

In order to determine the characteristics of the journals that compete with Anales de Pediatría, we analysed the scientific output published in general journals based on variables that are often taken into account by authors when they choose a journal. Thus, when authors published they work in a general journal other than Anales de Pediatría, it was in journals published in English (82.8% of articles) with a higher JCR ranking than Anales de Pediatría (83.4% of articles) and mostly consisted of access-by-subscription journals (73.8% of articles).

Of all the characteristics of competing journals, the one that may pose the greatest challenge to Anales de Pediatría is the journal quartile score. In this regard, the 91st position (Q3) of Anales de Pediatría in the journal ranking evinces the need to continue making improvements that will attract more and better original articles and promote its diffusion and visibility.

One such strategy would be the adoption of the bilingual Spanish–English publication format made by the journal in 2014.2 This format is becoming more frequent in Spanish journals,3 since the use of English promotes the international diffusion of the publications, increasing both the likelihood of receiving articles from foreign authors13 and of being read and cited by a larger population of researchers, while maintaining the Spanish allows the diffusion of the journal in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries. The figures obtained in this study can be used in the future to assess the effectiveness of this measure.

Furthermore open access to the texts is another factor that promotes the diffusion and visibility of the works published in the journal. Of the 23 journals of general paediatrics, only six are open-access, of which only one charges publication fees (BMC Paediatrics). Overall, immediate access to the texts is available for 68.4% of the articles published in these journals, most of which have been published by Anales de Pediatría.

The results presented here provide a snapshot of the role of Anales de Pediatría in attaining international visibility for Spanish paediatrics publications that will allow the future assessment of its evolution and the changes applied to it with the purpose of improving its quality, positioning and competitiveness.

María Francisca Abad-García is a member of the Editorial Team of Anales de Pediatría.

Gonzalo Solís Sánchez is an Associate Editor of Anales de Pediatría.