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Biomedical subjects

E Garfield

Publications and source records attributed to E Garfield.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

How can impact factors be improved?

Impact factors are widely used to rank and evaluate journals. They are also often used inappropriately as surrogates in evaluation exercises. The inventor of the Science Citation Index warns against the indiscriminate use of these data. Fourteen year cumulative impact data for 10 leading medical journals provide a quantitative indicator of their long term influence. In the final analysis, impact simply reflects the ability of journals and editors to attract the best papers available.

Bibliometrics

Of Nobel class: a citation perspective on high impact research authors.

The purpose of this paper was to determine if quantitative rankings of highly cited research authors confirm Nobel prize awards. Six studies covering different time periods and author sample sizes were reviewed. The number of Nobel laureates at the time each study was published was tabulated, as was the number of high impact authors who later became laureates. The Nobelists and laureates-to-be were also compared with non-Nobelists to see if they differed in terms of impact and productivity. The results indicate that high rankings by citation frequency identify researchers of Nobel class--that is, a small set of authors that includes a high proportion of actual Nobelists and laureates-to-be. Also, the average impact (citations per author) of Nobelists and laureates-to-be is sufficiently high to distinguish them from non-Nobelists in these rankings. In conclusion, a simple, quantitative, and objective algorithm based on citation data can effectively corroborate--and even forecast--a complex, qualitative, and subjective selection process based on human judgement.

Abstracting and Indexing

The impact of fraudulent research on the scientific literature. The Stephen E. Breuning case.

The goal of this study was to determine the research impact of scientific fraud through citation analysis of 20 Breuning publications, using the 1980 to 1988 Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index. These publications received 200 citations, of which 80 (40.0%) were self-citations by Breuning or his coauthors. Tracked over time, non--self-citations declined sharply in 1986 and later years, coinciding with disclosure of Breuning's fraud. The data indicated that, in this case, researchers effectively shunned work known to be or even suspected of being falsified. Unique citation contexts (101) were examined to see how citing authors used Breuning's work: 33 were negative (disagreed with findings/methods), 10 positive (agreed), and 58 neutral (no valuation). Also, 63 were inconsequential (no influence on the citing author's analysis/conclusion). Thirty-eight were material, but 21 of these led to negative conclusions. These data diminish the apparent impact of Breuning's work suggested by total citations alone.

Biomedical Research

100 citation classics from the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The 100 most-cited JAMA articles were identified using the 1955 through 1983 Science Citation Index of the Institute for Scientific Information. The most-cited article received 705 citations, while the least-cited article received 158. The oldest was published in 1910 and the most recent in 1976. These articles describe important medical advances in areas such as asbestos exposure, smoking, and oral contraceptives. Most of the 285 JAMA authors are Americans and include Baruch S. Blumberg and Edward A. Doisy, both Nobel laureates. Thirteen of the articles were included in JAMA's original landmark series; the editorial committee used a combination of peer review and citation frequency to select 51 articles.

Abstracting and Indexing

Mapping the world of biomedical engineering: Alza lecture (1985).

The key research areas of biomedical engineering are identified and analyzed. It is demonstrated how biomedical engineering fits into the world map of science. An analysis of biomedical engineering core journals provides statistical data about citation patterns in this discipline.

Abstracting and Indexing

Which medical journals have the greatest impact?

High-impact medical journals are identified using data from the 1981 and 1982 Journal Citation Reports. The Journal Citation Reports are an annual supplement to the Science Citation Index. Journals publish different types of editorial matter, much of which does not report substantive research. A special algorithm is used to calculate the number of substantial or "meaty" items. In 1981 The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine ranked highest among 78 journals in citations received; 53,945 and 47,887, respectively. These journals also have the highest impact factor, the average number of citations received by items in a journal's 1980 and 1981 issues. The British Medical Journal was highest in 1981 immediacy index, the measure of how quickly a journal's 1981 items were cited in 1981.

Bibliographies as Topic

Significant journals of science.

In 1974 the Science Citation Index (SCI) covered about 401,000 articles and communications in 2,443 scientific and technical journals. They cited about 3.2 million different publications an average of 1.8 times each. In this article some results of an analysis of more than 5 million citations in the references of journal articles indexed for the SCI in 1974 are presented and an attempt is made to interpret of those results in the light of an earlier study of 1969 citations.

Astronomical Phenomena