Letters to the Editor In Which Journals Do Active Researchers of Palliative Care Publish Their Articles? Maria Teresa San-Miguel, R.N., 1 Carlos Centeno, M.D., Ph.D., 1 Ana Carvajal, R.N., Ph.D., 2 and Mariano Ponz, M.D. 3 Dear Editor: The final question that a researcher asks once his or her work is completed is ‘‘which journal should I send this article to?’’ It is recommended that researchers publish their articles in one of the 3,700 leading world scientific journals that are included in the Science Citation Index (SCI); the highest im- pact factor (IF) is specified according to the Journal of Citation Report, with the higher position specified within its subcate- gory, Journal. There are criticisms relating to the equity, op- portunity, and interest of measure 1 research within these criteria, but evaluation agencies constantly seek to obtain this quality indicator in order to compare curricula for profes- sional promotion or in the competition for grants. Ultimately, researchers, like any other human beings, must make an in- come from their work, and the prestige emanating from these classifications may be important in enabling them to achieve that. Our research question could therefore be of relevance to many professional groups. The objective of this work is to identify in the journals in which the most active palliative care researchers have pub- lished their works in the last three years. In order to find out who these active researchers are, we selected the authors that contributed in excess of six abstracts to one or both of the European Association of Palliative Care Research Congresses, which took place in Venetia 2 and Trondheim 3 (2006 and 2008, respectively). Then, we searched the SCI in order to obtain references from the work of these researchers between 2007 and 2009. From the SCI references, we ranked the journals by frequency, noting both the 2008 IF and the best quartile po- sition within the category of each journal. We found the 28 most active researchers in the last two European Research Congresses. These authors contributed 516 references in 119 different SCI journals during the last three years (Table 1). In Table 2 we demonstrate the distri- bution by journal: 232 of the articles (45%) belong to five main journals of the Health Care Science and Service category: Palliative Medicine (18%), Journal of Palliative Care (13%), Journal of Pain and Symptom Management (12%), Journal of Palliative Medicine (7%), and Supportive Care in Cancer (5%). It is also important to emphasize the contribution of palliative care researchers to journals classified within the category of On- cology: 72 articles (14%) were published in journals included in this category. Other categories where in excess of three articles were published include anesthesia, health care sci- ence, general medicine, neurology, nursing, pharmacology, psychology and public environmental and occupational Table 1. Number of Articles Published by Most Active Researchers in Science Citation Index Journals between 2007 and 2009 Contributions in last two European Articles in Journal of Science Citation Index, 2007-2009 Researcher Research Conferences n % Stein Kaasa 32 38 7 Luc Deliens 29 45 9 Lucas Radbruch 21 24 5 Declan Walsh 18 15 3 Jon Havard Loge 17 19 4 Sheyla Payne 17 14 3 Julia Addington-Hall 16 20 4 David Currow 14 34 7 Gerrit Van der Wal 13 32 6 Mellar Davis 12 12 2 Friedemann Nauck 12 10 2 Robin Fainsinger 11 21 4 Scott Murray 11 12 2 Marie Fallon 10 16 3 Sophie Pautex 10 10 2 Florian Strasser 10 17 3 Eduardo Bruera 9 59 11 Carlos Centeno 9 10 2 David Clark 9 11 2 Franco De Conno 9 6 1 Amy Abernethy 8 2 0 Richard Harding 8 18 3 Lesley Colvin 7 9 2 Irene Higginson 7 43 8 Javier Rocafort 7 3 1 Claudia Mazzocato 6 2 1 Carla Ripamonti 6 9 2 Carla Stiles 6 5 0 Total 344 516 100 1 Palliative Care and Symptom Control Unit, University of Navarra Clinic, Pamplona (Navarra), Spain. 2 School of Nursing, University of Navarra, Pamplona (Navarra), Spain. 3 Oncology Department, University of Navarra Clinic, Pamplona (Navarra), Spain. JOURNAL OF PALLIATIVE MEDICINE Volume 14, Number 1, 2011 ª Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. DOI: 10.1089/jpm.2010.0310 4