Historical Development of the Journal Impact Factor and its Relevance for Occupational Health

Fator de impacto: importância e influência no meio editorial, acadêmico e científico

“…The journal was designed to collect law documentation from American proceedings, and was based on precedents that gradually summed to proceedings that were taking place in 48 states at that time. In addition to this publication, Shepards Citations Incorporation edited special publications, and among them there was one called Journal of the Patient Office Society [5].…”

“…As a result, it has been started a project of the United States government called Welsh Project, which resulted in the organization of the National Library of Medicine the way we know it today, with the participation of Eugene Garfield [5]. This author, with this activity and knowledge of previous experience, was the creator of the IF in 1955 and founder of ISI [8].…”

Japanese journals also have their citation classics in occupational medicine

“…In small disciplines such as occupational health, then the number of super-cited papers will not only be limited, but the absolute number of citations each paper ever receives will also be small when compared with the number cited in other, more popular, areas such as cancer research or general medicine. (12) Because trends clearly change over time, it is difficult to establish at exactly what threshold a super-cited paper should begin to be counted. Garfield, for example, suggested that, in 1955, a scientific article with 250 citations could be deemed a "classic", whereas the threshold might have risen to 400 by 1975, and to 1000 by 1995 (11).…”

“…Garfield, for example, suggested that, in 1955, a scientific article with 250 citations could be deemed a "classic", whereas the threshold might have risen to 400 by 1975, and to 1000 by 1995 (11). By setting their threshold at 100 citations, Gehanno and his colleagues (1) located 85 classics from five, large their relevance to human health is not immediately apparent (12).…”

Creating Environmental and Occupational Health: A Journal and the Field it Shaped, 1919–2009

“…"Pecking order lists" have always held a certain fascination, 20 and probably for these reasons journal impact factors have now risen to prominence in the academic world, including within the field of EOH. 21 Citations are now seen as the "currency" of modern science, 22 and as such, the third article of this supplement 23 examines the most highly cited articles published during the journal's early days, between 1919 and 1960. Given the rise of bibliometric indicators in assessing longitudinal journal performance, 24 the fourth article describes a citation-based analysis of the longest-running and perhaps most famous incarnation of the AEOH, the Archives of Environmental Health (AEH), which ran between 1960 and 2004.…”