ObjectiveTo evaluate whether there is any preference for citing journals from other countries to the detriment of Brazilian journals, in three Brazilian orthopedics journals.MethodsAll the references of articles published in 2011 by the journals Acta Ortopédica Brasileira, Coluna/Columna and Revista Brasileira de Ortopedia were evaluated to as certain how many of these came from Brazilian journals and how many from foreign journals.Results3813 references distributed among 187 articles were analyzed. Out of this total, 306 (8.02%) were from Brazilian journals. There was no difference between the three journals analyzed. There were 76 articles (40.64%) without any citations of articles in Brazilian journals and only two articles (1%) cited more Brazilian articles than articles published elsewhere.ConclusionThere is a need for Brazilian researchers to cite articles from Brazilian journals more often.