[Authors' affiliations and addresses in published articles. Lack of care penalizes French universities in international rankings].

Objective: To assess, through the example of the université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, whether the poor international visibility of French universities may be due in part to a lack of care by researchers in listing their affiliations and address on their scientific publications.

Method: Querying the heading "address" of Medline, Embase.com and Pascal Biomed for 2003 in searches for publications from Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1.

Results: In 300 bibliographic entries studied, we found 44 different forms of the university's name. Only 15% of the addresses were correct, and 44% did not mention the author's affiliation with the university.

Discussion: Authors' lack of care in listing their affiliations and address and the absence of a standardized official name for the university may explain the poor visibility of French universities. Recommendations about this topic might help to promote the reputation and work of French researchers internationally.