BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to examine Malaysian contributions in the field of biomedical and health sciences.
METHODS: In this study, 3697 publications affiliated to Malaysian addresses from the sci database between 1990 and 2005 were sampled. This study also explored publication productivity trends, authorship and collaboration pattern, core journals used, and citations obtained.
RESULTS: Main contributions were journal articles (73.3%). Most authors (63.7%) contributed only one article and 16.1% produced over 30-68 publications. Multi-authored works were the norm. The productive authors were named either first or second in publications. There were active collaborations with authors from Asia-Pacific countries (35%) and Europe (30%). The majority of publications were contributed by institutions of higher learning (87%). Core journals used follow quite close to Bradford's zonal ratios of 44:152:581. The active research areas were identified. About 71.3% of publications received citations especially those published from 1995 to 1999.
CONCLUSION: This study helped librarians identify active researchers, active research areas and journals relevant to biomedical and health sciences researchers and useful when producing reports to university management and planning medical collection policies and deciding on journal subscriptions and cancellations.
We analysed 580 articles (original articles only) published in Medical Journal of Malaysia between 2004 and 2008, the resources referenced by the articles and the citations and impact received. Our aim was to examine article and author productivity, the age of references used and impact of the journal. Publication data was obtained from MyAIS database and Google Scholar provided the citation data. From the 580 articles analyzed, contributors mainly come from the hospitals, universities and clinics. Contributions from foreign authors are low. The useful lives of references cited were between 3 to 11 years. ISI derived Impact factor for MJM ranged between 0.378 to 0.616. Journal self-citation is low. Out of the 580 sampled articles, 76.8% have been cited at least once over the 5 years and the ratio of total publications to citations is 1: 2.6.