A snapshot of EU publications in sleep research: A scientometric survey

A bibliometric analysis of the literature covering a one-year period (2003) was performed to evaluate the number of scientific publications on sleep and its distribution among the European Union countries. 912 articles appearing in Life Sciences and Clinical Medicine journals indexed in the Institute for Scientific Information databases were downloaded. These articles were authored by EU researchers; Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy rank at the top of the EU countries. The output distribution of the most productive EU countries are also presented and discussed. Despite the limitations of the methods used, the present results give an interesting snapshot of the EU publishing behavior in sleep research.