Research performance in key medical universities in China observed from the scientific productivity

Research activities in the life sciences during the past few years, have increased appreciably in China, both in regard to relative output of publications and in their impact on the international research community. The purpose of this study is to analyze and evaluate quantitatively the scientific productivity of key medical universities in China by using CBMdisc, MEDLINE and SCI databases. The results showed that Tongji Medical University ranks first in terms of paper output in Chinese and in English languages, while Beijing Medical University is placed second in output but is first in citation impact. Shanghai Medical University had the top annual paper output per scientist, with 2.53 papers in Chinese and 0.13 papers in English. The results also showed that the coverage of Chinese biomedical publications by western indexing services is very poor.