Recent decades have seen an increase in publications in English from the international community in basic science journals, as well as in general and specialty medical journals.^1–6 However, to date, no one has examined the international publishing trends in gastroenterology and hepatology journals. We examined the extent of internationalisation in this field with regard to high-quality research publications over the period 1970–2005. Additionally, earlier studies discussing internationalisation of biomedical literature did not deal with the impact of multinational collaborations (articles involving authors from two or more countries). Thus, our secondary aim was to describe changes in multinational research publications during this period.

We reviewed the three highest-ranked gastroenterology journals based on journal impact factor and total literature citations for 2005: Gastroenterology, Hepatology and …