Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria, 80 years: part 1 (1943-1962)

Arquivos de Neuro-Psiquiatria (ANP), the official journal of Academia Brasileira de Neurologia (ABN, Brazilian Academy of Neurology), celebrated 80 years in 2023.

To analyze the publication trends, authorship, and editorial patterns of the first 20 volumes of ANP.

We analyzed the first 20 volumes of ANP, published from 1943 to 1962. The data were tabulated independently by two blinded researchers and cross-verified.

Oswaldo Lange was the chief editor, and, from 1943 to 1962, 20 volumes, 79 issues, 2 supplements, and 885 articles were published. We analyzed 509 articles (and excluded non-research papers). We found 905 authors (1.78 authors/article), and only 3.75% were women. Horacio Martins Canelas, Rolando Ângelo Tenuto, and Paulo Pinto Pupo were the most prolific authors. There were 326 papers on neurology, 83 on neurosurgery, 88 on psychiatry, and 12 on basic research. A comparison between the first 10 and second 10 volumes disclosed a significant difference in the fields of the articles: a progressive decrease in papers on psychiatry and an increase in those on neurology and basic science (p = 0.005). There was also a significant decrease in the total number of published articles in the second 10 volumes (p = 0.001), and a higher number of citations per article (p = 0.014), but no difference in the number of pages (mean number in the original articles: 11.9 ± 6.7 pages). Although most articles came from Southeastern Brazil (74%) and were written in Portuguese (84%), 91 were foreign.

The first 20 volumes marked the establishment of ANP in the post-World War II era. Most papers were written in Portuguese and included international contributions from Egas Moniz, Barraquer-Bordas, Bing, Denny-Brown and Wartenberg, for example.