The Elevation of Annals of Rehabilitation Medicine to the Status of an International Journal After Adopting an English-Only Policy.

OBJECTIVE

To use bibliometric analyses to determine whether Annals of Rehabilitation Medicine (hereafter also referred to as Annals) became an international journal after adopting an English-only policy in 2011.

METHODS

Articles from the third issue of 2011 to the third issue of 2015 were analyzed according to the following parameters: whether the research was supported by funding, country of authorship, impact factor, total citations, the countries of researchers who cited Annals; the journals that cited Annals; and the Hirsch index.

RESULTS

One hundred twenty-eight (34.2%) of the 374 original articles were supported by research funds. The main authors were from Korea (550/556, 98.9%), the USA (3), Iran (2), Japan (1), Turkey (1), and the United Kingdom (1). The manually calculated impact factors in 2013 and 2014 were 0.582 and 0.667, respectively. The total annual citations from years 2012 to 2015 were 15, 130, 252, and 189, respectively. The countries of residence of the main authors who cited Annals were the USA (146), Korea (89), and China (49). The journals that cited Annals most frequently were the Journal of Physical Therapy (34), Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (15), and Frontiers in Human Neuroscience (13). The Hirsch index was 9.

CONCLUSION

The above results demonstrate that the change of the language policy of Annals to English-only was successful in elevating the journal to the international level. The journal's aim of sharing up-to-date knowledge dedicated to advancing the care of the disabled and enhancing their everyday abilities and quality of life has been satisfactorily realized.