A technique to identify core journals for neurosurgery using citation scatter analysis and the Bradford distribution across neurosurgery journals

Abstract

The core journals for neurosurgery were identified to be Journal of Neurosurgery, Neurosurgery, Spine, Acta Neurochirurgica, Stroke, and Journal of Neurotrauma. A list of core journals could similarly be generated for every subject. This would facilitate a focused reading to keep abreast of current knowledge. Collated across specialties, these journals could depict the current status of medical science.

An application of Bradford’s law: identification of the core journals of pediatric neurosurgery and a regional comparison of citation density

“…Our citation database did not fit the currently accepted formulations of Bradford's law, an issue common to many other researchers [6,7,11]. The observed distribution showed a greater number of citations in the first and last zones than expected, while the central zones contained less.…”

“…Bradford's law, although not commonly used in academic medicine, was recently used by Madhugiri et al [11] to identify core journals for the entire field of neurosurgery.…”

“…Egghe's expansion of Leimkhuler's method was employed in this study, as it has been the most widely used [7,8,10,11]. This formulation relies on the use of exponential functions to predict zonal distribution and depends upon the citation database parameters of total citations by the top journal and the total number of journals; however, no mathematical formulation has achieved consistent statistical significance [12].…”

“…In 2013, Madhugiri et al [11] described the first application of Bradford's law of distribution to identify core journals within neurosurgery. The researchers sampled all articles published within a defined 3-month period meeting criteria as stated by the authors from 11 top-ranked neurosurgical journals based on their h-index and impact factor.…”

“…The researchers sampled all articles published within a defined 3-month period meeting criteria as stated by the authors from 11 top-ranked neurosurgical journals based on their h-index and impact factor. They were able to fit Bradford's law into three partitions (p) with a total of 182 journals with the six core journals for zone 1 being the Journal of Neurosurgery, Neurosurgery, Spine, Acta Neurochirurgica, Stroke, and Journal of Neurotrauma [11].…”