Original ContributionTop-cited articles in emergency medicine
Introduction
Governments, funding agencies and promotion committees, and academic institutions are increasingly interested in measuring the research quality and productivity of individual scientists as an indication of their scholarly excellence. Citation rating using data from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), owned by the Thomson Corporation of Toronto, is now a popular method to evaluate the impact on the scientific community of individual scientists and research institutions. The argument is that the greater the value of the article, the more times it will be cited, and that the citation number is thus viewed as a direct measure of the recognition that this publication has had in its scientific field [1]. Although there is obviously considerable debate regarding the value of citation rates [2], [3], the analysis of citation rates may give an encyclopedic review of citation frequency and key areas of scientific interest. Emergency medicine (EM) has undergone substantial developments in the past few decades and is now evolving at a rapid pace. However, a systemic analysis of top-cited articles in the field of EM is not yet available.
The aim of the present study was to therefore identify and examine the characteristics, such as ranking, publication year, publishing journal, publication type, and authorship, of the most frequently cited articles published in EM journals.
Section snippets
Materials and methods
We selected 9 of the 11 journals listed under the subject category “Emergency Medicine” on the Journal Citation Report 2003 for analysis, which included Annals of Emergency Medicine, Academic Emergency Medicine, American Journal of Emergency Medicine, Resuscitation, Journal of Emergency Medicine, Emergency Medicine Journal, Unfallchirurg, Injury, and Pediatric Emergency Care. We excluded Journal of Burn Care & Rehabilitation for analysis because its contents are beyond the scope of most
Top-cited articles in EM journals
Two hundred thirty-seven articles were retrieved that were published in EM journals and that were cited 50 times or more. Using the Web of Science update of April 25, 2005, we selected the top 100 most frequently cited articles from the list for further analysis and ranking (Table 1). The most cited article received 335 citations and the 3 least cited articles received 71 citations. The median citation number of these 100 articles was 102 (range, 71-335). The majority (72 articles) received
Discussion
Citations of an article are only one limited measure of its effect and usefulness, but also currently the only one that is quantifiable. Our study identified and characterized the 100 top-cited articles published on EM journals in the past 3 decades, providing an encyclopedic view of the citation frequency of these top-cited articles. The information may help those who want to find the history, evolution, and areas of intensive research activities of EM.
Previous study found that the impact
References (14)
- et al.
Research topics, author's specialty, and funding sources of articles published in an emergency medicine journal
Ann Emerg Med
(1984) - et al.
Related citation characteristics of research published in Emergency Medicine versus other scientific journals
Ann Emerg Med
(2001) Citation analysis as a tool in journal evaluation
Science
(1979)Citation analysis and journal impact factors: is the tail wagging the dog?
Acta Anaesthesiol Scand
(1999)Citation rates and journal impact factors are not suitable for evaluation of research
Acta Orthop Scand
(1998)- et al.
Journal prestige, publication bias, and other characteristics associated with citation of published studies in peer-reviewed journals
JAMA
(2002) - et al.
One hundred citation classics in general surgical journals
World J Surg
(2002)
Cited by (86)
Fifty Most-Cited Research Articles in Elbow Surgery: A Modern Reading List
2023, Journal of Hand Surgery Global OnlineForty years of emergency medicine research: Uncovering research themes and trends through topic modeling
2021, American Journal of Emergency MedicineCitation Excerpt :This type of work is labor intensive and becomes impractical as the volume of literature grows [5,6]. One common approach to mitigate these difficulties has been a bibliometric analysis of a small number of the top cited journal articles [7-13]. Typically, 100 of the most cited journal articles within a given time period are analyzed because it is a manageable collection of articles but large enough to draw reliable conclusions.
Top-cited publications on point-of-care ultrasound: The evolution of research trends
2018, American Journal of Emergency MedicineCitation Excerpt :Thus, it is reasonable to identify POCUS research trends by analyzing only top-cited publications, which can be used to model study designs for future POCUS-related studies and as a resource for clinicians undergoing POCUS training. In previous scientometric and bibliometric studies in other fields that analyzed the top-cited publications, it took 3 to 7 years for recent publications to accumulate enough citations to be enrolled in the top-cited list: emergency medicine (4 years) [16], general surgery (5 years) [17], anesthesiology (6 years) [18], rehabilitation (7 years) [19], critical care medicine (4 years) [20], and hyperbaric oxygen therapy (3 years) [21]. These results indicate that this method of analysis may lead to underestimating the importance of recent publications.
Ascertaining top evidence in emergency medicine: A modified Delphi study
2019, Canadian Journal of Emergency MedicineBibliometric analysis of the 100 most cited articles in nonspecific neck pain research: A STROBE-compliant study
2023, Medicine (United States)