The Evolution of Academic Performance in Emergency Medicine Journals: Viewpoint from 2000 to 2009 Journal Citation Reports

Abstract

Objectives: Emergency medicine (EM) is a young but rapidly growing field. An evaluation of academic performance and the growing impact of EM journals would help to elucidate the increase in the number of EM scientific studies. The authors used the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database to investigate the scientific achievements of EM journals in the past 10 years.Methods: This was a literature review study. All data were collected from the JCR database. Journals listed in the EM category from 2000 to 2009 were included. Eleven categories that were considered most closely related to EM by a consensus of the authors were chosen for comparison, including cardiac and cardiovascular systems, clinical neurology, critical care medicine, gastroenterology and hepatology, infectious diseases, general and internal medicine, pediatrics, respiratory system, surgery, toxicology, and urology and nephrology. Data on journals in the EM category were collected, including journal title, language, journal country or territory, impact factor for each year, total number of EM journals for each year, and the EM category aggregate impact factor (available from

A systematic review of the statistical scope of restoration ecology of invaded grassland ecosystems

“…This effect may also be underestimated as we citing a smaller proportion of studies then in the past with seminal articles receiving the most citations compared to other articles on the topic (Seglan 1997). Conversely, the effect on the impact factor of the journal may be inflated as the impact factor of journals generally increases over time (Chew et al 2007, Lee et al 2011) and high impact journals tend to publish studies with large effects (Barto and Rillig 2012) and studies that confirm hypotheses (Leimu and Koricheva 2004) regardless of the statistics or study design. There was a negative relationship between the number of factors and the citation rate of the article and the impact factor of the journal.…”

Emergency Medicine Journal Impact Factor and Change Compared to Other Medical and Surgical Specialties

“…We identified the slope of the linear regression as representative of trends, assuming a linear relationship between impact factors and time, and that normality was not strongly violated. 2 …”

“…It is the most widely accepted quantitative and objective method for evaluating journals. 2 Although many promotion committees recognize the flaws in impact factor when considering the productivity of investigators, some institutions may rely on both total and mean publication impact factor for faculty promotion. It may be investigators at these institutions who are most likely to submit original work to non-EM journals.…”

“…Finally in 2000, "emergency medicine" became an independent journal category within JCR. 2 In 1961, Garfield developed the impact factor, one metric to measure the relative importance of a journal in a field. The impact factor of a journal is the mean number of citations received per paper published in that journal during the 2 preceding years.…”

“…3,4 Between 2000 and 2009, the number of EM journals increased 58%, outpacing the growth of every other category of clinical medicine. 2 The impact factors for EM journals also increased, although there has been a widening gap between "high"-impact-factor and "low"-impact-factor EM journals. 2 Given the increasing impact factors of EM journals in the preceding decade, we sought to determine how both current EM journal impact factors and the rate of growth in the "top-tier" EM journals compare to those from other medical and surgical specialties.…”