[German publications in leading English language journals]

The per capita publication output of German medical research is low compared not only to the English-speaking nations but also to Austria and Switzerland. We assessed the publications from German universities in the leading English language general medical journals: New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), Lancet, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), and British Medical Journal (BMJ).

Medline (1988-5/2000) was searched for journal-articles with German origin published in the above journals and manually classified as to institution and speciality.

372 publications from Germany were found. 216 had been published in Lancet, 87 in NEJM, 52 in BMJ, and 17 in JAMA. 58 were excluded (2 from British military hospitals in Germany, 2 from pharmaceutical companies, 2 from physician associations, 18 from non-university basic research institutions or government agencies, 3 from non-medical university departments, 30 from non-university hospitals, 1 from a transfusion service of the German Red Cross). The remaining 314 publications were from 34 universities. The most speciality was internal Medicine with 140 university publications, the most represented university was the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich with 43 publications. 5 universities had no publications in the analysed journals.

Large differences were found between the German universities with respect to publications in the leading English Language general medical journals.