IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/scient/v128y2023i3d10.1007_s11192-023-04647-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does the journal impact factor reflect the impact of German medical guideline contributions?

Author

Listed:
  • Christopher Traylor

    (University of Göttingen Medical Center)

  • Christoph Herrmann-Lingen

    (University of Göttingen Medical Center)

Abstract

Contributions to medical guidelines, so far, have hardly been considered in the measurement and evaluation of research performance in Germany. We therefore examined 70 high-quality medical guidelines from the years 2017 and 2018 and investigated the type of publications cited by the guidelines, whether the citation rates of articles differ between substantiating guideline recommendations and background text, and whether or not the Journal Impact Factor is correlated with the guidelines’ citation frequency of individual journals. Our study found that the guidelines cited original articles much more than books, reviews, or other guidelines. Slightly less than 10% of the citations came from the 2 years preceding guideline publication, and more than 50% of the references were at least 8 years old. A subsample showed that articles which only provided background information were cited less frequently outside the guidelines than those that substantiated a specific recommendation. Lastly, there was only a weak correlation (0.1 ≤ Tau ≤ 0.35) between the citations counts of individual journals in the guidelines and their respective JIFs despite guideline subject. Our study suggests that the JIF is not an appropriate tool to assess the clinical relevance of medical research.

Suggested Citation

  • Christopher Traylor & Christoph Herrmann-Lingen, 2023. "Does the journal impact factor reflect the impact of German medical guideline contributions?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(3), pages 1951-1962, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:128:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-023-04647-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-023-04647-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-023-04647-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11192-023-04647-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Magnus Eriksson & Annika Billhult & Tommy Billhult & Elena Pallari & Grant Lewison, 2020. "A new database of the references on international clinical practice guidelines: a facility for the evaluation of clinical research," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 122(2), pages 1221-1235, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Li, Xin & Tang, Xuli & Cheng, Qikai, 2022. "Predicting the clinical citation count of biomedical papers using multilayer perceptron neural network," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4).
    2. Dongyu Zang & Chunli Liu, 2023. "Exploring the clinical translation intensity of papers published by the world’s top scientists in basic medicine," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 128(4), pages 2371-2416, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:128:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-023-04647-z. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.