Decline of dermatological publications in the UK: truth or myth?

For some time, there has been a suspicion that the number of articles published by UK-based authors in dermatology has declined. This probably reflects a reduction in the publication output of dermatology departments generally.

We identified articles with British authorship in the British Journal of Dermatology between 1970 and the present date, and compared the journal with the three most commonly cited dermatological journals: Archives of Dermatology, Journal of Investigative Dermatology and Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. Later, we expanded this search to include a further 33 dermatological journals.

Despite an increase in the total number of published papers by the British Journal of Dermatology, there was a decline in the number of British-authored papers, from 97 (57%) in 1970 to 80 (22%) in 2005. The trend was also seen in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, with 16 papers (5%) in 1989 and 7 (2%) in 2005. In Journal of Investigative Dermatology, British papers increased from 10 papers in 1975 to 17 in 2005, with a percentage decrease from 7% to 4%. Overall, despite an increase in the total number of publications in dermatological journals from 2745 in 1985-5034 in 2005, British publications increased from 271 in 1989 to only 289 in 2005, which represents a percentage decrease from 10% to 6%.

Despite a three-fold increase in dermatology consultants and registrars in UK, a three-fold increase in dermatological journals and a four-fold increase in dermatological papers published, the overall number of British papers has remained static over the years.