Knowledge dissemination in occupational therapy in Brazil: a portrait in its journals

Introduction: We present and discuss the results of a survey that took as an object the papers published between 1990 and 2014, in the Cadernos de Terapia Ocupacional da UFSCar (Occupational Therapy UFSCar Journal) and in the Revista de Terapia Ocupacional da USP (Occupational Therapy Journal of USP). Objectives: To characterize the production according to the publication year, authors, authors’ institutions, area and subarea, text category and the presence of the term “occupational therapy” or correlate in the title, abstract or keywords. A virtual database was created to systematize this production, which constitutes a considerable part of the Brazilian occupational therapists publications. Method: With the data gathering and organization regarding all the journals volumes in the period, were included in the study 881 texts, and this number has increased importantly, especially since 2006. Results: Over 60% of the texts are from the occupational therapy area, and two of its subareas were present with greater prominence: “mental health” and “fundamentals”. There were 254 authors’ institutions of origin enrolled, in which the Higher Education is more prevalent, notably public universities. We identified 1404 different authors, 85.8% were women, being the vast majority occupational therapists. In both journals, more than 80% of the authors published only one text, and few (between 5.3% and 3.2%) published five or more. Conclusion: Such data regarding the academic institutionalization of Brazilian occupational therapy is worrisome, since the publications is a necessary condition, but not enough, for dialogue and academic construction.