Introduction 

The Board of FMUL asked the Research Support Office of the University of Lisbon for a bibliometric report with the aim of showing, albeit succinctly, the scientific activity of FMUL, including national benchmarking indicators.

Technical Data (HERE)

Results

1 – Bibliometric Analysis – 2000-2012

Source: Own calculations. Web of Science / Thomson Reuters
Figure 1 – Evolution of total publications authored or co-authored by the Faculty of Medicine and of total publications in Portugal, year by year from 2000 to 2012

Figure 1 indicates that whereas FMUL (including HSM) produced 98 publications in 2000, Portugal on the whole produced 3.294 publications. One notes that until 2005 the output of FMUL remained relatively stable, and thereafter the trend is clearly one of growth, even surpassing the Portuguese rate of growth in 2008. Production authored or co-authored by FMUL more than tripled between 2005 (114) and 2012 (386).

Source: Own calculations. Web of Science / Thomson Reuters
Figure 2 – Evolution of FMUL’s quinquennial publications (yellow over black) showing IMM’s contribution (publications with at least one address associated with the IMM – yellow)

In addition to the high growth of FMUL’s quinquennial publications as a whole (average 17% per 5-year period), one notes that the percentage of publications with at least one address associated with the IMM increased from 33.1% of the total in 2002-2006 to 52.6% of the total in 2008-2012.

Source: Own calculations. Web of Science / Thomson Reuters
Figure 3 – Evolution of citations in FMUL’s quinquennial publications (yellow over black) showing IMM’s contribution (publications with at least one address associated with the IMM – yellow)

The number of citations followed the trend disclosed by the number of publications (Figure 2)

2 – Analysis of Scientific Expertise and Rankings of Authors – 2008-2012 

Next we shall examine in more depth the most recent period covered by the present analysis (2008-2012) with regard to:
– Breakdown by scientific area
– Contribution of authors with 20 or more publications in 2008-2012

Source: Own calculations. Web of Science / Thomson Reuters
Figure 4 – Breakdown of FMUL publications (including the HSM and IMM) in 2008-2012 by WoS Scientific Area (Top 20)

The WoS scientific areas where FMUL has more publications are: “Clinical Neurology” (10%), “Neurosciences” (6%), “Biochemistry Molecular Biology” (6%), “Immunology” (4%) e “Medicine General Internal” (4%).1

Table 1 
Ranking of the 10 FMUL authors (with more publications in the 2008-2012 five-year period), including HSM and IMM.

Source: Own calculations. Web of Science / Thomson Reuters

Table 2 
Ranking of the 10 FMUL authors (among those with > 20 publications in 2008-2012) with more citations in 2008-2012, including HSM e IMM

Source: Own calculations. Web of Science / Thomson Reuters

Table 3 
Ranking of the 10 FMUL authors (among those with > 20 publications in 2008-2012) with the highest h-index until the end of 2012, including HSM and IMM.

Source: Own calculations. Web of Science / Thomson Reuters

*Sum of citations obtained between 2008 and 2012
**The h-index is the number of articles by an author with citations equal or higher than that number ( it is not subject to the 2008-2012 period)

3 – Benchmark – Clinical Medicine 

The data presented below show the scientific output of five medical colleges in Portugal in the scientific area “Clinical Medicine2”.

We used a function of the InCites programme that calculates the “scientific impact” standard measure. This measure divides the total number of citations per publication, over a particular period, scientific area, and type of document by the world measure of citations over the same period, scientific area and type of document.

Although the University of Porto has more publications, the scientific impact per publication of the University of Lisbon in this scientific area is higher, as shown in Figure 5.

Source: Own calculations. InCites / Thomson Reuters
Figure 5 – Relative scientific impact vs. number of publications in “Clinical Medicine” in five Portuguese universities. FMUL has the second largest output and the highest relative impact of publications.

In general, the Bibliometric analysis demonstrates FMUL’s great scientific activity in terms of volume and impact of publications, and a major contribution from the IMM.

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1. The absolute number of WoS classes is greater than the number of articles (some articles fall into more than one area). It is also necessary to take into account that the methodology used to allocate scientific areas to articles may be disproportionate (some areas have a higher propensity for publication) for which reason these data do not express the relative specialization.
2. A scientific area of the 22 “Essential Science Indicators” created by Thomson Reuters that includes 49 WoS scientific areas (251).