Resumo

RYDER, Elena. PREDOMINIO DEL IDIOMA INGLÉS Y NO DE LA LENGUA NATIVA, EL ESPAÑOL, EN TRABAJOS DE IMPACTO EN SALUD PÚBLICAEN VENEZUELA. INCI [online]. 2001, vol.26, n.12, pp.619-623. ISSN 0378-1844.

Public Health and epidemiological papers are very important to be known by medical practitioners in order to use the results derived from those studies. However, it is a common practice that in Spanish-speaking countries, most of those papers are published in English instead of Spanish. To analyze if this situation was prevalent in Venezuela, a search was performed at the end of 2000, through PubMed/MEDLINE, of the last 200 articles published that contained the key word "Venezuela", assuming that most of the epidemiological or public health related papers, should contain this key word. From the 200 papers, 72.5% were devoted to Public Health or Epidemiology. Only 33% were written in Spanish, while 67% were written in other languages, mainly English. From the 47 papers written in Spanish, 42.55% were published in three Venezuelan journals, and the rest, in 12 different journals from other iberoamerican countries. Five papers, written in English, were published in journals from Spanish-speaking countries. Most of the English-written papers were of outstanding interest in the common clinical practice or to establish health policies in the country, where most of the physicians and health authorities are not fluent in English. In conclusion, the reason to publish in English even in journals of Spanish-speaking countries stressed the importance that authors in Venezuela give to this language for dissemination of their results; however, we think that papers on priority areas in Public Health should be published in the native language, and with preference in domestic journals, in order to reach the medical community and health authorities from the country of origin of the reported results.

Palavras-chave : Idiomas; Publicaciones; Venezuela.