[Scientific information in pediatrics: utility of Indice Médico Español]

The international bibliographic databases (Medline, Embase, Current Contents, etc.) are one of the main sources of information in medicine. Because only some Spanish journals are included in these databases, knowledge and use of the Indice Médico Español (IME) is also important because this database includes almost all Spanish biomedical and scientific journals (basic, experimental and clinical), which provides certain well known advantages for authors and editors in Spain. Of the journals indexed at any given time in the IME (461 journals), those related to pediatrics constitute 5.2 % of the total (24 journals) with a total of 21,006 documents. Only 34 % of all the pediatrics documents in the IME are included in PubMed. The most productive pediatrics journals in the IME are Anales Españoles de Pediatría (8,639, plus 912 registered from 2002 as Anales de Pediatría), Revista Española de Pediatría (2,564), Acta Pediátrica Española (2,189), Archivos de Pediatría (1,365), Pediatrika (1,314), and Cirugía Pediátrica (685). Anales de Pediatría is the third most productive journal in the IME, after Medicina Clínica (13,323) and Revista Clínica Española (9,603). Overall, pediatrics is the second most productive field of research in medicine in Spain after internal medicine. A complementary tool of the IME is the hypothetical study of the national and international impact factor (IF) of Spanish biomedical journals. The hypothetical national IF of Anales de Pediatría (0.334) is noteworthy among Spanish medical journals overall and is much higher than those of Acta Pediátrica Española (0.134), Pediatrika (0.119), Cirugía Pediátrica (0.099) and Revista Española de Pediatría (0.079). The international IF of Anales de Pediatría (0.372) is higher than that of some pediatrics journals included in the Science Citation Index. The IME should be included in bibliographic search strategies for scientific information in pediatrics as a complement to international databases.