Research in physical and rehabilitation medicine in Europe: how are we doing?

There is growing awareness that research is important for the development of physical and rehabilitation medicine (P&RM), and the output of research projects in terms of papers in international journals is apparently increasing. Many journals have a backlog (time between acceptance and publication) of more than 12 months, despite an increase in the number of issues and the number of pages per issue. It is, however, not clear to what extent countries in Europe contribute to this growing body of knowledge in P&RM compared with other continents and which countries contribute to the European output of research papers. In order to get a better understanding of the European situation I evaluated the nationality of the research groups that published in 4 multidisciplinary P&RM journals in 2004. These journals have the highest score on the Science Citation Index (SCI) publication list of 2004 and also represent national and/or international societies of P&RM.