I think that this posting discusses an interesting topic,
however the study conducted did not address the concern expressed
(percentage of French biologistes that publish).... Instead this study
indicated the percent contribution of French authors to peer-reviewed
medical literature (that could be conveniently searched). Also, clearly
authors of peer-reviewed lab medicine publications (from all countries)
include a number of professional groups including physicians, clinical
scientists, nurses, pharmacists, technologists and many others and in my
opinion, it is not appropriate to infer from the percentage-rate of
publication of a country, the performance of one professional sub-group.
Dr. Andrew W. Lyon
Univ. Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
-----Original Message-----
From: clinical biochemistry discussion list
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Joseph WATINE
Sent: April 13, 2002 4:33 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: EC4 register and French laboratory professionals
According to the current European political authorities,
laboratory technicians should be authorised to manage clinical
laboratories. It takes two years of university education to become a
laboratory technician. In several European countries, clinical
laboratories are currently being managed by more trained laboratory
medicine specialists. For example, in France, at least nine or ten years
of university education are necessary for such specialists (called
biologistes) to become respectively pharmaceutical doctors or medical
doctors specialised in laboratory medicine. Two or more additional years
may be necessary for some of them to specialise in some particular
laboratory medicine disciplines. Currently, in France, most of the
several thousands of biologistes thus work in clinical laboratories,
either in or near the hospitals or in commercial laboratories outside
the hospitals.
In France as well as in Europe, many laboratory medicine
specialists consider that the best way to improve the quality of
laboratory medicine is by raising the quality of the individual
professionals. In this context, some highly trained European laboratory
medicine specialists, including some French biologistes, have developed
the initiative of an European register of Clinical Chemistry (the
so-called EC4 register) [1]. Among the many requirements implied by this
register, an European Clinical Chemist should be able to publish in
international scientific journals. Our aim was to see whether or not the
two above mentioned categories of French biologistes were significantly
contributing to the international biomedical literature. We used the
MEDLINE “Journal Browser” function
(http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/). We selected some journals related
to laboratory medicine (according to its French definition) with various
impact factors [2] and written in American/English or in French. In each
journal, we took into account, over a minimal three-month period, at
least the 200 most recent references (or all references if less than 200
references were available), in which the address of the main author was
indicated (i.e. the only one which is often indicated in MEDLINE). The
sourced journals were (with percentages of French main authors for each
Journal): Pathol Biol (77.3%), Clin Chem (4.7%), Clin Chem Lab Med
(12.1%), Ann Clin Biochem (1.6%), Ann Biol Clin (95%), FEBS Lett (9.3%),
Clin Biochem (3.5%), Clin Lab Med (0.9%), Arch Pathol Lab Med (1.1%),
Scand J Clin Lab Invest (0.5%), Scand J Clin Lab Invest Suppl (2%), Am J
Clin Pathol (3.1%), Ther Drug Monit (7.2%), Clin Microbiol Rev (3.9%), J
Clin Microbiol (8%), J Antimicrob Chemother (9.2%), J Med Virol (6.4%),
Ann Trop Med Parasitol (4.3%), Zentralbl Bakteriol (1%), Eur J Clin
Microbiol Infect Dis (10.3%), Scand J Infect Dis (4.9%), Scand J Infect
Dis Suppl (1.3%), Antimicrob Agents Chemother (7.9%), Infect Control
Hosp Epidemiol (8.1%), J Hosp Infect (7.5%), Infect Immun (5.9%),
Epidemiol Infect (0.9%), Hematol Cell Ther (67%), Immunol Today (7.4%),
Blood Coagul Fibrinolysis (10%), Thromb Haemost (8%), Blood (6.6%),
Blood Rev (2%), Tranfus Sci (9.4%), Semin Hematol (3.7%), Ann Hematol
(2.8%), Tranfus Med (2.4%), Tranfus Med Rev (2.2%). The total number of
references that we took into account is 9627 (mean by journal 
standard deviation = 253  79). The figures in table 1 are in
general agreement with the figures obtained by others [3], and suggest
that our journal selection and number of references are representative
of the current laboratory medicine publishing situation. In table 2, the
only two references having their main author address in a French
commercial laboratory are a short letter written in American and an
article written in French [4, 5]. The main conclusion that we can thus
derive from our survey is that, bearing in mind that approximately half
of the thousands of French biologistes currently work in commercial
laboratories, a very large proportion of them do not actually contribute
(table 2), and therefore not satisfy the above mentioned EC4 register
requirement.
REFERENCES
1) Sanders GT, Kelly AM, Breuer J, Kohse KP, Mocarelli P, Sachs C. Guide
to the EC4 register European Clinical Chemist. Eur J Clin Chem Clin
Biochem 1997; 35:797-803.
2) Journal Citation Reports on microfiche. Institute for Scientific
Information. Philadelphia, USA, 1998.
3) Hefler L, Tempfer C, Kainz C. Geography of biomedical publications in
the European Union, 1990-98. Lancet 1999; 353:1856 (comment by Takei N,
in 354:516-7).
4) Lepargneur JP, Heller R, Soulie R, Riegel P. Urinary tract infection
due to Arcanobacterium bernardiae in a patient with a urinary tract
diversion. Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis 1998; 17:399-401.
5) Felden F, Croizier A. [VIDAS Stallertest: clinico-biological
evaluation of a new global test for respiratory allergy]. Pathol Biol
(Paris) 1998; 46:819-23 [Article in French].
Table 1: numbers and percentages of references originating from the
twelve first countries (or groups of countries) according to their main
author addresses
numbers percentages
U.S.A. 2570 26.7
U.K. 1145 11.9
France 1015 10.5
Scandinavia 839 8.7
Germany + Austria 761 7.9
Japan 476 4.9
Benelux 462 4.8
Italy 392 4.1
Canada 392 4.1
Spain 272 2.8
Australia 166 1.7
Switzerland 118 1.2
other countries 1137 11.8
total 9627 100
Table 2 : addresses of the French main authors
numbers percentages
commercial laboratories 2 0.02
hospitals 719 7.4
others 294 3.1
total 1015 10.5
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