In psychiatry the interest in empirical research has increased in the last decades. For the `Tijdschrift voor Psychiatrie' it was assessed whether this development was reflected in a change in the type of publications. All papers that were published in the `Tijdschrift' in the period 1972-1988 were reviewed for the following characteristics: type of the article, number of authors, number of references, number of pages and origin and profession of the first author. Similar data were collected for the `Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica' (Acta) and for `Psychiatria, Neurologia, Neurochirurgia' (PNN). In the `Tijdschrift' 19% of the papers were dedicated to empirical research. In the Acta this was 66% and in PNN 27%. Both in the `Tijdschrift' and in the Acta an increase in the number of research papers was observed in the period 1972-1988. In the `Tijdschrift', however, the number of research papers remained low.