The bibliographic impact of epidemiologic studies: what can be learnt from citations?
- Annette Leclerc*,
- Jean-François Chastang,
- Nadine Kaniewski,
- Diane Cyr,
- Anna Ozguler,
- Alexis Descatha
- Correspondence to: Annette Leclerc, INSERM U687, INSERM U687, Batiment 15-16 Hôpital Paul Brousse, 16 av PV Couturier, Villejuif, 94807, France; annette.leclerc{at}inserm.fr
- Received 9 February 2009
- Accepted 9 September 2009
- Published Online First 9 October 2009
Abstract
Objective: To document one dimension of the impact of an epidemiologic study, the impact through citations in scientific journals.
Methods: Two sets of articles from studies performed in France were considered. They presented original results on occupational risk factors for low back pain (LBP) and upper limb disorders (ULD). Citations of these articles were retrieved through the Web of Science and Google scholar, and described according to several criterias.
Results: Most citations present in the Web of Science were also retrieved by Google Scholar, except for the most recent ones.
In the Web of Science, after exclusion of self-citations and duplicates, the total number of citations was 109, from 23 different countries, for the LBP articles; the corresponding numbers were 96 and 18 for ULD. A relatively large number of the citations belonged to clinical journals outside the fields of occupational health, ergonomics, and public health.
Conclusion: This example suggests that results dealing with occupational health disseminate into various fields of clinical research. However, this is only one dimension of the impact of a study.
