[Is there a correlation between the SIGAPS score and publishing articles in French?]

SIGAPS score determines to a great extent each university hospital's funding for research. This score is considered to reflect the scientific production. Due to its financial impact, he may modify authors' attitudes leading them to publish their articles in French. Our objective was to evaluate the association between the SIGAPS score and publications in French.

Based on Rouen University Hospital's (RUH) SIGAPS data from 2007 to 2010, we used Spearman's correlation to establish an association between SIGAPS score of each author and the fact that they published in French.

A positive correlation was found between SIGAPS score and author's number of publications in French (r(s)=0.51; IC(95%)=[0.44; 0.58]). The relationship between the SIGAPS score and the author's publication rate in French was negative but higher (r(s)=-0.87; IC(95%)=[-1.0; -0.68]; author's deciles).

The relationship between the SIGAPS score and the number of publications in French is not surprising as the SIGAPS score is based on the number of publications. As regards to the publication rate in French, this was even more interesting as our results showed that the more productive an author was, the less they published their results in French. Publications in French did not appear to be the best way to improve individual SIGAPS score. There is high heterogeneity between authors who are very prolific, with one third having a publication rate in French high above the average and one third who had a publication rate in French well below the average.

There was a high negative correlation between SIGAPS score and the publication rate in French for RUH's researchers (author's deciles).