The scientific production of Brazilian neurologists: 1995-2004.

The Brazilian scientific production saw more than a four-fold increase from the 1990s onwards. The aim of this study was to evaluate the evolution of scientific production by Brazilian clinical neuroscientists over the last 10 years. A search in the PubMed identified 295 clinical neuroscientists and their publications. Brazilian production corresponded to 2.37% of the papers published by the 20 indexed periodicals that regularly publish clinical neuroscience research. If only the first and last two years are compared, there was a real growth of 75.1%. More than 40% of the Brazilian papers were published in Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria, the official journal of the Brazilian Academy of Neurology. When only those periodicals with impact factor higher than one are considered, the percentage falls to 0.86% in the whole 10-year period, but attains 1.23% in 2004. Epilepsy and infectious diseases were the sub-areas with the highest scientific production.