• Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.259-277
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to analyze how the changes of evaluation standards have affected Korean medical researchers' academic performance by comparing the publication status of medical articles both domestically and abroad. A total of 314,559 domestic articles in KMbase and 53,423 articles stored in MEDLINE published abroad by Korean researchers were analyzed. All of the data were compared per year according to the research field and indexed journals by numbers and proportions of articles published domestically and abroad. The analysis showed that the number of total articles and the proportion of articles published abroad increased continuously. In the early 2000s, articles published in Korea decreased, otherwise articles published abroad increased sharply. SCI articles showed a steady increase before 2000, and continued to increase over the next few years. KCI articles also showed a rapid increase in the early 2000s while other articles were decreasing. Publication trends shown in this study were similar despite quantitative and timely differences by research area. Performance evaluations focusing on SCI articles affected on quantitative decrease in the number of total articles published domestically. Quantitative growth itself is not an absolute indicator for academic achievement. Therefore, to complement any evaluation of academic achievement, qualitative analysis needs to be done as well.