Campos CF

Language: Spanish
References: 0
Page: 5-7
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Forty years ago, the first issue of the journal Cirujano General was published. At the time, there were close to 70,000 physicians in Mexico. The reach of publications was limited to their number of printed issues. Most Mexican journals published between 2,000 and 5,000 copies. Therefore, due to their limited circulation, no journal (including those that published over 10,000 copies of each number) could even dream of reaching all of the country´s physicians. To think of distributing a journal throughout Latin America or the world verged on the fantastic. To increase their reach, publications attempted to gain access to medical school libraries and the main hospitals and medical centers countrywide; some, those with the largest resources and enterprising editors, sent issues to a few institutions in Latin American and around the world. Nevertheless, their reach was still limited, particularly due to the prohibitive costs of postal distribution. Very few Mexican journals were able to be included in the Index Medicus, which considerably increased their visibility, although the possibility of consulting them remained limited for several reasons.