The impact of research in primary care and family medicine: the Thomson Reuters Web of Science Subject Category 'Primary Health Care'

This year (2011), Thomson Reuters Web of Science (http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/science_products/a-z/web_of_science/) introduced in its database a Subject Category ‘Primary Health Care’ and brought 14 journals that were previously included under other categories, under this heading (Table 1). This marks an important development. The primary health care category includes family medicine and general practice. With this, Thomson Reuters followed the National Library of Medicine, which in 2009 had grouped primary care journals under a title in its own right. The coming of age of research in primary care and family medicine has been a slow and agonizing process. And even amidst a growing awareness of the importance of a sound scientific basis of primary care for society,1,2 this agonizing will continue to be the case in the years ahead. In 2004, Mendis and Solangarachchi3 concluded that family medicine research was virtually invisible in PubMed compared to other health care disciplines. Their findings and those of others4 have been explained as a lack of interest in, and affinity with research, among family physicians (FPs) and other primary care professionals, with their orientation for pragmatic practical solutions of patient problems.