[Scientific production in public health and the international bibliographic data bases]

This study begins by briefly situating the development of indexing procedures in the scientific literature, dating to the latter half of the 19th century. Next, taking public health in Latin America as its reference, it analyzes the current use of indexing for the evaluation of scientific production, and thus that of scientific periodicals. The argument is that for various reasons, international indexing should not be used as the only parameter for evaluating the impact of Latin American scientific production in public health. Criteria other than impact indices should be developed to promote a broader understanding of the dynamics of scientific production in the Latin America public health field.