Medisch-wetenschappelijk onderzoek in Nederland

Objective

Most of the biomedical research is performed in University Medical Centers (UMC’s). Increasingly, however, biomedical research is also done in non-academic large teaching hospitals, united in the Organization for Topclinical Hospitals (STZ) in the Netherlands. The objective of this study was to compare citation scores of biomedical publications from UMC’s and STZ hospitals.

Design

Bibliometric analysis.

Method

The Center for Science and Technology Studies of the University of Leiden, the Netherlands, annually analyzes the volume and quality (reflected by normalized citation scores) of the publications of all UMC’s in the Netherland. Recently, also for STZ hospitals a similar analysis has been performed.

Results

Research publications from UMC’s in the Netherland have normalized mean citation scores that are far above the mean world average. The normalized mean citation score of publications from STZ hospitals is lower when research is done independent of a UMC, whereas research that is a combined effort of UMC’s and STZ hospitals has a very high mean normalized citation score.

Conclusion

The Netherlands produces a relatively large volume of biomedical research and publications. Based on citation analysis research done in collaboration between UMC’s and STZ hospitals has a very high quality. As most STZ hospitals mostly collaborate with a neighbouring UMC, the formation of research networks that overlap with existing teaching and training networks, could provided the necessary infrastructure for further stimulating this collaborative research.

Conflict of interest: none declared. Financial support: none declared.