Brazilian scientific production in the 40 psychiatric journals with high impact factor in 2006

The Brazilian scientific production published in 2006 in the twenty psychiatric journals with high impact factor (IF) according to the Journal of Citation Report (JCR), 2006, was evaluated. All articles from 94 journals with an IF higher than the average (n=40) were selected. We assessed the articles that had at least one author affiliated to a Brazilian institution as well as those with only Brazilian authors or a first/senior author belonging to a Brazilian institution. Secondly, the distribution of the author(s) by state was determined. Among 7996 articles surveyed 96 (1.20%) had at least one author from a Brazilian institution and in eight, the first senior author belonged to a Brazilian institution, not including the 59 publications that were written only by Brazilian authors. The distribution by state showed São Paulo as ranking first with 46 articles (47.91%) and absolute predominance of the South-Southeast region (98.95%). Although, Brazilian publications on psychiatry had demonstrated apparent quantitative and qualitative growth, scientific production on the subject remains highly concentrated in a few states.