Prediction of citation counts for clinical articles at two years using data available within three weeks of publication: retrospective cohort study

Abstract

Objective To determine if citation counts at two years could be predicted for clinical articles that pass basic criteria for critical appraisal using data within three weeks of publication from external sources and an online article rating service. Design Retrospective cohort study. Setting Online rating service, Canada. Participants 1274 articles from 105 journals published from January to June 2005, randomly divided into a 60:40 split to provide derivation and validation datasets. Main outcome measures 20 article and journal features, including ratings of clinical relevance and newsworthiness, routinely collected by the McMaster online rating of evidence system, compared with citation counts at two years. Results The derivation analysis showed that the regression equation accounted for 60% of the variation (R 2 =0.60, 95% confidence interval 0.538 to 0.629). This model applied to the validation dataset gave a similar prediction (R 2 =0.56, 0.476 to 0.596, shrinkage 0.04; shrinkage measures how well the derived equation matches data from the validation dataset). Cited articles in the top half and top third were predicted with 83% and 61% sensitivity and 72% and 82% specificity. Higher citations were predicted by indexing in numerous databases; number of authors; abstraction in synoptic journals; clinical relevance scores; number of cited references; and original, multicentred, and therapy articles from journals with a greater proportion of articles abstracted. Conclusion Citation counts can be reliably predicted at two years using data within three weeks of publication.

Brief Resolved Unexplained Events (Formerly Apparent Life-Threatening Events) and Evaluation of Lower-Risk Infants

“…9,10 Two independent reviewers then critically appraised the full text of the identified articles (n = 23) using a structured data collection form based on published guidelines for evaluating medical literature. 11,12 They recorded each study's relevance to the clinical question, research design, setting, time period covered, sample size, patient eligibility criteria, data source, variables collected, key results, study e6 in the updated (n = 18) and original (n = 37) systematic review (Supplemental Table 7).…”

Blood Culture in Evaluation of Pediatric Community-Acquired Pneumonia: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis

“…10,11 If at least 1 reviewer judged the full text of an article to be clinically relevant, then 2 independent reviewers critically appraised the article using a structured data collection form based on published guidelines. 12,13 These 2 reviewers determined by consensus whether the article should be cited in the systematic review.…”

Citation counts in transportation research

“…Because space is limited in journal articles, not all sources drawn upon by researchers are cited in their works, leaving room for secondary citer motives [17]. In research fields such as ecology [12], crime-psychology [23], medicine [5,13] and chemistry [10] factors unrelated to scientific relevance and quality have been found to be associated with citation counts.…”