Background: The Revista Chilena de Pediatría (Rev Chil Pediatr), official journal of Sociedad Chilena de Pediatría is index in SciELO, but not in the National Library of Medicine (NLM) of USA. Objectives: a) Determine the profile of published and visited articles of Rev Chil Ped, in order to compare them with the Jornal de Pediatria from Brazil (J Ped Br) and the Journal of Pediatrics (J Ped) from USA. b) Evaluate the visibility of Rev Chil Pediatr compared to Revista Medica de Chile (Rev Med Chil). Method: On line issues from the above mentioned journal were evaluated through SciELO database and PubMed database from 2001 - 2006. A random and representative subset of published articles was obtained from each one of the 3 journals during the referred period. The most visited articles from Rev Chil Pediatr were analyzed and classified as originals (clinical and basic research) and non originals (editorial, clinical case, reviews and others). The articles were classified according to thematic content in 25 medical specialties. In addition, the number of annual visits to Rev Chil Pediatr and Rev Med Chil were analyzed, including the most frequent citations given and received in that period of time. Results: Out of 512 articles in Rev Chil Pediatr, 220 were analyzed; 35% were originals and 65% non originals, with a significant lower percentage of original articles compared to J Ped Br and J Ped (p < 0.05). The thematic areas with more articles were respiratory disease, infectious diseases and nutrition with 9.1, 7.7 and 7.7%, respectively. Rev Chil Pediatr published twice as many nutrition articles and five times more public health articles compared to J Ped (p < 0.05). The most visited articles on line were of nutrition, infectious diseases, respiratory diseases and neonatology. Among the 10 most visited articles from Rev Chil Pediatr, 7 were review articles. Since 2005, an explosive growth is detected in the number of visits to articles from Rev Chil Pediatr in SciELO. When the number of visits was adjusted to the number of physicians belonging to the corresponding society, there was a higher number of visits to Rev Chil Pediatr from 2005 compared to Rev Med Chile. Conclusion: The thematic content of Rev Chil Pediatr is similar to regional journals, but different to international ones. There is an appropriate correlation between published and visited articles. SciELO has been an important tool that contributes to the diffusion of research published in Rev Chil Pediatr