ANÁLISIS DEL ÍNDICE DE IMPACTO EN LA ESPECIALIDAD DE CARDIOLOGÍA SEGÚN EL JOURNAL CITATION REPORTS EN EL PERÍODO 2006-2008 / Analysis of the impact factor in cardiology according to the Journal Citation Reports during the period 2006-2008

Heart diseases are at the top of the health statistics concerning the main causes of death in the world. This fact reveals the need of focussing the health scientific policy toward the diagnosis and treatment of these diseases. Currently, the best results in this field are not widely published; however, the challenge for Cuban publications, in general, is to reach a better visibility. In order to meet this challenge, a bibliometric study of the Cardiology journals which are available in the Web of Science was carried out, having the Impact Factor (IF) as the main variable. The issues of the JCR Science Edition during the period from 2006 to 2008 were analysed. The results showed that there is not a sufficient amount of journals on this field, in spite of the fact that there is a group which has increased its number, year after year, with a relatively high impact factor. Although the vast majority of these journals are published in English, some others, of high renown, are published in Spanish or are multilingual. The Journal of the American College of Cardiology was the journal with the highest impact factor in 2008; therefore, it is the one with the highest visibility in this specialty. Finally, it was determined that most of the Cardiology journals are from North America, mainly from the US, while only 6 of them are from Europe