Intellectual production in collective health: epistemology and evidence from different traditions.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the differences in the patterns of Brazilian scientific production, published in journals that concentrate the largest production from Brazilian postgraduate programs in the area of collective health. METHODS Based on the distinction between paradigmatic and non-paradigmatic science proposed by Kuhn, the publication of articles in the main collective health journals, related to the respective sub-areas and number of authors per article, was evaluated in the three-year period between 2004 and 2006. Data were collected from the LILACS database and independently categorized by authors into the traditional sub-areas of collective health. RESULTS Multiple-authored articles were much more frequent among those categorized into the sub-area of epidemiology, whereas single-authored articles were more frequent in the areas of social sciences and humanities in health. In addition, there was a difference in the frequency of publication of these types of articles in various journals, with the total number of articles on epidemiology being higher than the sum of all articles from the other two sub-areas. CONCLUSIONS The different patterns of authorship found have important implications for the processes that evaluate programs and researchers. This cannot be dismissed, otherwise the long-term sustainability of the multidisciplinary profile, which has characterized collective health in Brazil throughout three decades, will be threatened.