Background: As part of the preparatory work for the elaboration of a strategic plan for the development of scientific research in Mauritania, an overview of national biomedical research was recommended by the supervisory authorities.
Aim: Describe the bibliometric profile of biomedical scientific publications in Mauritania, indexed in Medline database, over the past 25 years.
Methods: A bibliometric study was carried out on Medline Database covering the period from 1 January 1992 to 31 December 2016. Were retained, the scientific papers whose one of the author's address, at least, was a Mauritanian one. The fields of the Medline display format were used to describe the following items: authors, addresses, journal, language, article type, and Mesh terms. The assignment of a publication to an author was limited to the first and last position. Only first institutional affiliation mentioned in the authors' addresses was considered to classify the establishments' productivity. International co-operation has been studied through the compilation of all co-author addresses.
Results: Between 1992 and 2016, Medline had indexed 141 Mauritanian articles, 74 of them was published during the previous five-year period (2012-2016). These papers covered essentially the following disciplines: "Infectious diseases", "Community health", "Parasitology", "Veterinary Medicine" and "Marine Sciences" It mainly consist of an original article (79%), written in English (57%) and published without financial support (72%). Mauritanian articles have been published in 72 journals in 12 different countries. Three journals « Bulletin de la Société de Pathologie Exotique », « Pan African Medical Journal » and « Malaria journal » have accounted 23 % of the publications ; 36% of the papers have been published in French journals. The research subjects of the Mauritanian biomedical literature was carried out via 215 major keywords, five of them represented 22% of the publications: «Malaria», «HIV infections», «Anopheles», «Camels», and «Goat diseases »". For 112 scientific articles (79%), the first author were Mauritanian, as for the rest (n = 29) the authors were coming from 15 different countries, mainly from France, Senegal and the Arab Maghreb. In 48% of the articles, the affiliation of the first author was one of four following structures: « the National Hospital Centre in Nouakchott», «The National Center for Livestock and Veterinary Research», « the Faculty of Science and Technology » and «the National Institute for Research in Public Health». A partnership with an international team was noted for 40% of publications, particularly with France, Italy, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Tunisia.
Conclusion: During the last past 25 year, the biomedical publication feature, inconsistently growing since 2012, has been characterizing by the adequacy of research themes with the population's health needs, an international visibility and an extensive networking with many foreign research structures. Strengthening Maghrebian collaboration in the fields of research training and Multi-centric research would be a fine support to the national dynamics of biomedical research.