Publication Patterns of South African Dental Schools 1990-2005

Background: Dreyer and van Wyk (J Dent Ass S Afr 1996;51:726) analysed research output from 1990-1994 and suggested that South African (SA) dental schools may have reached a limit to produce peer-reviewed research. More recently, a report on publishing of SA research (Academy of Science of SA 2006, www.assaf.co.za) drew attention to a substantial decline in medical publications from 1981 to 2004. Objectives: To examine peer-reviewed publication output 1990-2005 from dental schools at the universities of Limpopo [ L] - previously Medunsa, Pretoria [P], Stellenbosch [S], Western Cape [C] and Witwatersrand [W]. Methods: Peer-reviewed research publications from 1 January 1990 to 31 December 2005 were sought with PubMed and key words - university name plus - dental, individual dental disciplines and specified local authors; a manual search of the SA Dental Journal was also done. Journal quality was assessed with the CJM score (Cleaton-Jones, Myers. J Dent Educ 2002; 66: 690) which uses a score of 10 (high) to 1 (low). Results: A total of 989 publications were found (58% in SA journals) comprising C 90 (48%), L 88 (66%), P 208 (74%), S 233 (47%), and W 370 (42%). The mean CJM scores (sd) per dental school were C 2.3 (2.1), L 2.3 (2.2), P 1.7 (1.6), S 2.5 (2.2) and W 2.9 (2.3). When publication outputs 1990-1994 were compared with those 2000-2004 C maintained its output but there were reductions for L, P, S and W. Mean CJM scores remained static for L and P, reduced for C and S, while that for W increased. Conclusion: the opinion of Dreyer and van Wyk (1996) that SA dental schools have reached a limit in published research output is upheld but it is possible to increase the quality of journal in which publications appear.