A comparison of citations in the Indian Journal of Gastroenterology with other journals.

OBJECTIVE

Comparison of citing pattern of the Indian Journal of Gastroenterology (IJG) with that of three general gastroenterology journals included in the Science Citation Index (SCI).

METHODS

Citations in articles published in the IJG in the year 1988 were analyzed; data for three control journals [American Journal of Gastroenterology (AJG), Hepatogastroenterology (HGE) and Italian Journal of Gastroenterology (ItJG)] were obtained from the SCI Journal Citation Reports for the year 1988.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES

Yearwise distribution of citations and citing half-life; aggregate of citation scores [percentage of citations from a journal ximpact factor (IF) of that journal] for five journals most frequently cited by each of the journals; and, proportion of citations from three most cited general medical journals and three most cited gastroenterology journals as ranked by IF.

RESULTS

Percentage of citations for all years from 1979 to 1988 in the IJG were lower than in the three control journals, and citing half-life longer (9.0 yr vs 6.0, 6.4, 6.9 yr for the three control journals). While aggregate citation score of IJG for the five journals most frequently cited in it was lower than that of two control journals (178.7 vs 205.4, 140.7 and 201.5 for AJG, HGE and ItJG respectively), total citations in the IJG from three most cited general medical journals (8.8 vs 9.4, 6.1 and 9.2 for AJG, HGE and ItJG respectively) and from three most cited gastroenterology journals (16.3 vs 16.0, 15.0 and 14.1 for AJG, HGE and ItJG respectively) were comparable with the control journals; this was related to lower number of citations from the journals with the highest IF in both general medicine and gastroenterology.

CONCLUSIONS

Citations in IJG were older than those in the three control journals and tended to be from journals with lower IF. To improve the citation pattern of the IJG, authors contributing to it need to keep up with recent literature in high quality journals and to cite more recent citations.