Publications in ISI-indexed public health journals from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan during 1999-2008.

Background: There has been a steady increase in China's annual research output. We aimed to investigate the research output in public health from 3 major regions of China: mainland China (ML), Hong Kong (HK) and Taiwan (TW).
Material/methods: We retrieved papers published in 105 public health-related journals from ML, HK and TW with the applications of the ISI Web of Knowledge database. The total papers, impact factor, times cited, papers published in the highest impact factor journals, and most often published journals were analyzed for quantity and quality comparisons among the 3 regions.
Results: Totally, 2587 papers were published during 1999-2008, including 1089 (42.1%) from ML, 471 (18.2%) from HK, and 1027 (39.7%) from TW. The total annual number of papers from the 3 regions increased significantly, from 140 in 1999 to 424 in 2008. The average impact factor of papers from TW (2.588) was higher than those from HK (2.531) and ML (1.568). The average number of times cited of each paper from TW was 8.84, followed by 8.34 from HK and 5.90 from ML. Excluding publications in Biomedical and Environmental Sciences, papers from ML had higher average IF and average times cited. TW had the most articles published in the highest impact factor journals, and HK had the highest total IF of most often published journals.
Conclusions: The total number of papers in public health from China increased significantly during 1999-2008. ML contributed the highest annual paper output compared with HK and TW, but papers from ML are more often locally published and less frequently cited.