Accountability and High Impact Journals in the Health Sciences

As the requirement for accountability and demonstration of the impact of public and privately funded research increases, the practice of attributing impact to research published in high impact journals is on the rise. To investigate the relevance of existing bibliometrics laws to current health research practices, 57 research areas in Web of Science (WoS) representing the major and minor disciplines were studied. In the majority of cases, Garfield’s Law of Concentration is followed with 20% of journals in each area contributing 80% of the total citations. The major multidisciplinary journals formed an anomalous grouping with low overall citation rates, although those documents cited were at a level well above the norm. In all research areas studied, team science is the prevailing norm, single author publications were rarely present in the data sets. For researchers looking to maximize the uptake and recognition of their work, publication in the top journals in the appropriate research area would be the most effective strategy, which does not in many cases include the major multidisciplinary journals.