Does the journal impact factor reflect the impact of German medical guideline contributions?

Christopher Traylor () and Christoph Herrmann-Lingen ()
Additional contact information
Christopher Traylor: University of Göttingen Medical Center
Christoph Herrmann-Lingen: University of Göttingen Medical Center

Scientometrics, 2023, vol. 128, issue 3, No 22, 1962 pages

Abstract: Abstract Contributions to medical guidelines, so far, have hardly been considered in the measurement and evaluation of research performance in Germany. We therefore examined 70 high-quality medical guidelines from the years 2017 and 2018 and investigated the type of publications cited by the guidelines, whether the citation rates of articles differ between substantiating guideline recommendations and background text, and whether or not the Journal Impact Factor is correlated with the guidelines’ citation frequency of individual journals. Our study found that the guidelines cited original articles much more than books, reviews, or other guidelines. Slightly less than 10% of the citations came from the 2 years preceding guideline publication, and more than 50% of the references were at least 8 years old. A subsample showed that articles which only provided background information were cited less frequently outside the guidelines than those that substantiated a specific recommendation. Lastly, there was only a weak correlation (0.1 ≤ Tau ≤ 0.35) between the citations counts of individual journals in the guidelines and their respective JIFs despite guideline subject. Our study suggests that the JIF is not an appropriate tool to assess the clinical relevance of medical research.

Keywords: Journal impact factor; Clinical practice guidelines; Guidelines; Citations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11192-023-04647-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:scient:v:128:y:2023:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-023-04647-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11192

DOI: 10.1007/s11192-023-04647-z

Access Statistics for this article

Scientometrics is currently edited by Wolfgang Glänzel

More articles in Scientometrics from Springer, Akadémiai Kiadó
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().