Research trends in the journal Hormones and Behavior (1987-2000)

As a continuation of the study carried out by Svare more than 15 years ago (Horm. Behav. 22 (1988), 139) and to determine the tendencies of the evolution of behavioral endocrinology since then, our aim was to extend his work until 2000, assuming that the journal Hormones and Behavior would be representative of the field at large. To study this 14-year period and compare it with Svare's data, we kept the same criteria and categories, behavioral patterns, and species. Our results show that "sexual behavior" in "rodents" is still the most extensive field studied by behavioral endocrinologists, although frequency of other topics is increasing, above all "aggressive and emotional responses," and especially the interrelationships between them. Interestingly, studies dedicated to humans are slowly becoming more common. In addition to these analyses, we obtained the several citations received by a randomly selected sample of articles during the period that was divided by the number of years when the articles can be potentially cited. These ratios revealed that research on "humans," within the category of species, and on "memory, learning, and conditioning" and "aggressive and emotional responses," within the behavioral categories, present the highest visibility in the literature. Furthermore, this analysis was complemented with information about the main receptor journals of the papers published in Hormones and Behavior, classified by the same categories. All these data, although limited by the analysis of only one journal, permitted us to reflect on whether the evolution tendencies formulated by Beach (Horm. Behav. 15 (1981), 325) for this discipline were applicable to the period studied, thus confirming its status as a mature discipline for the last quarter of the 20th century.