Bozzo Anthony, Oitment Colby, Evaniew Nathan, Ghert Michelle
Division of Orthopaedic Surgery (Dr. Bozzo, Dr. Oitment, and Dr. Evaniew), Department of Surgery, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and Hamilton Health Sciences (Dr. Ghert), Juravinski Hospital and Cancer Center, Hamilton.
J Am Acad Orthop Surg Glob Res Rev. 2017 May 18;1(2):e007. doi: 10.5435/JAAOSGlobal-D-17-00007. eCollection 2017 May.
The journal impact factor (JIF) is thought to reflect the average number of citations an article will receive and therefore can influence study impact and clinical decision making. However, analysis of citation rates across multiple scientific and research domains has shown that most articles will not reach this expected number of citations. This phenomenon is known as citation skew and it has not previously been examined in the orthopaedic literature. The objective of this study was to determine the extent to which citation skew exists within orthopaedic journals and thus to determine whether the JIF in the orthopaedic literature reflects individual study citation rates.
We used data from the Thomson Reuters (now Clarivate Analytics) Web of Science to determine the 2015 JIF and citation distribution for all orthopaedic journals listed in the database. We calculated the percentage of articles with fewer citations than the JIF for each journal. Finally, we analyzed the citation distribution within groups of orthopaedic subspecialty publications.
We identified a total of 74 orthopaedic journals and 29,296 publications for the years 2013 and 2014. Across all orthopaedic journals, 85% of published articles are cited fewer times than the JIF would indicate. The median number of citations of all articles was zero for all journals (interquartile range = 0-0) except for seven journals, for which the median number of citations per article was 1.
Citation skew is prevalent across the orthopaedic literature. Most published work is not cited in the first 2 years following publication, and the JIFs are the result of a few highly cited articles. The assessment of an individual orthopaedic study's quality should not be determined by the JIF but rather by direct evaluation of the methodology, relevance, and appropriateness of the study's conclusions.
期刊影响因子（JIF）被认为反映了一篇文章将获得的平均被引次数，因此会影响研究影响力和临床决策。然而，对多个科学和研究领域的引用率分析表明，大多数文章不会达到这个预期的被引次数。这种现象被称为引用偏态，此前在骨科文献中尚未得到研究。本研究的目的是确定骨科期刊中引用偏态的存在程度，从而确定骨科文献中的JIF是否反映了个体研究的引用率。
我们使用汤森路透（现为科睿唯安）科学网的数据来确定数据库中列出的所有骨科期刊的2015年JIF和引用分布。我们计算了每种期刊中被引次数少于JIF的文章所占的百分比。最后，我们分析了骨科亚专业出版物组内的引用分布。
我们共确定了2013年和2014年的74种骨科期刊和29296篇出版物。在所有骨科期刊中，85%的已发表文章被引次数少于JIF所显示的次数。除了7种期刊外，所有期刊所有文章的被引次数中位数均为零（四分位间距=0-0），这7种期刊每篇文章的被引次数中位数为1。
引用偏态在骨科文献中普遍存在。大多数已发表的作品在发表后的头两年内未被引用，JIF是少数高被引文章的结果。对个体骨科研究质量的评估不应由JIF决定，而应直接评估研究方法、相关性和结论的恰当性。
