Publications In ISI-indexed Public Health Journals From Mainland China, Hong Kong And Taiwan

Background:China is the largest developing country with the most population in the world, to which public health service has always been a fundamental and comprehensive work encountered with various challenges. Under different political and economic administrations, the development status in the field of public health varies in the three regions of China:mainland (ML), Hong Kong (HK) and Taiwan (TW). The scientific publications in public health from ML, HK and TW have not been reported. Therefore we aimed to investigate the publication status of the three regions in the field of public health.Methods:Totally 105 journals covered by the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) under the subject category of "Public, environmental & occupational health" were selected as the source of public health related journals. Papers published in the 105 journals during the period of 1999-2008 from ML, HK and TW were retrieved from "Web of Science". The numbers of total papers, accumulated impact factor, average impact factor, total citations, average citations, total times cited, times cited per paper, and papers published in the most impacted journals were investigated for quantity and quality analyses among the three regions. The publication distribution in ML was also investigated to find out the major contributing provinces.Results:A total of 2587 papers were published from the three regions during 1999-2008, including 1089 (42.1%) from ML,471 (18.2%) from HK, and 1027 (39.7%) from TW. Between 2006 and 2008, the annual output from ML exceeded those from HK and TW. The total number of papers from the three regions increased significantly from 140 in 1999 to 424 in 2008. Papers from TW got the best scores in terms of the accumulated impact factor (2635.070), average impact factor (2.588), total citations (28,598), average citations (27.306), total times cited (7603), and times cited per paper (8.842), whereas papers from ML made the lowest scores in terms of the average impact factor (1.568), average citations (20.936), and times cited per paper (5.902). TW contributed the most high-impacted papers (160), accounting for 50% of the total number from the three regions, while ML and HK contributed 89 (28%) and 70 (22%), respectively. During the period of 1999-2008,27 provinces from ML published public health related papers. Five largest contributing provinces were Beijing, Shanghai, Zhejiang province, Jiangsu province and Hubei province, which published totally 761 papers, comprising 69.8% of the total papers from ML.Conclusions:The total number of papers in public health from the three major regions of China increased significantly from 1999 to 2008. The ML's share of contributions has exceeds those of HK and TW. However, the quality of papers from ML lags behind those from HK and TW. Papers from ML mainly distributed in provinces with faster economic development.