Background

Previous studies have demonstrated that the frequency with which a publication is cited varies greatly. Our objective was to determine whether author, country, journal, or topic were associated with the number of times an epidemiological publication is cited.

Methods

We used outcome-based sampling and investigated one public health issue – child injury prevention, and one clinical topic – coronary artery disease (CAD) prevention. Using the Institute for Scientific Information's (ISI) Web of Science^® databases, we limited searches to full articles involving humans published in English between 1998 and 2004. We calculated the citation rate and, after frequency-matching on year of publication, selected the 36 most frequently cited and 36 least frequently cited articles per year, for a total of 252 highly-cited and 252 infrequently-cited articles per topic area (child injury prevention and CAD prevention).

Results

Highly-cited articles in both CAD and child injury prevention were more likely to be published in medium or high impact journals or in journals with medium or high circulations. They were also more likely to be published by authors from U.S. institutions. Among articles examining CAD prevention, the highly-cited articles often involved risk factors, and the association between topics and frequency of citation persisted after adjusting for impact factor. Among articles addressing child injury prevention, topic was not statistically associated with citation.

Conclusion

Journal and country appear to be the factors most strongly associated with frequency of citation. In particular, highly-cited articles are predominantly published in high-impact, high-circulation journals. The factors, however, differ somewhat depending on the area of research the journals represent. Among CAD prevention articles, for example, topic is also an important predictor of citation whereas the same is not true for articles addressing injury prevention.

Condensed Abstract

Our objective was to determine whether author, country, journal, or topic were associated with the number of times an epidemiological publication is cited. We used outcome-based sampling and investigated one public health issue, child injury prevention, and one clinical topic, coronary artery disease (CAD) prevention. Using the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Science^® databases, we limited searches to full articles involving humans published in English between 1998 and 2004. We calculated the citation rate and, after frequency-matching on year of publication, selected the 36 most frequently cited and 36 least frequently cited articles per year, for a total of 252 highly-cited and 252 infrequently-cited articles per topic area (child injury prevention and CAD prevention). Highly-cited articles in both CAD and child injury prevention were more likely to be published in medium or high impact journals or in journals with medium or high circulations. They were also more likely to be published by authors from U.S. institutions. Among articles examining CAD prevention, the highly-cited articles often involved risk factors, and the association between topics and frequency of citation persisted after adjusting for impact factor. Among articles addressing child injury prevention, topic was not statistically associated with citation.