Where do radiologists publish their work? A comparative analysis of publications by radiologists in nonradiology journals in 2000 and 2010

Abstract

Objective: We performed a comparative bibliometric study of the scientific publications by radiologists in radiology and nonradiology journals in 2000 and 2010.

Materials and methods: A PubMed database search was conducted for all articles published by radiologists in journals indexed by Science Citation Index and Science Citation Index Expanded in 2000 and 2010 by using the search term "radiol*" or "imag*" in the first author's affiliation field. Subject categories and the impact factor (IF) of the publishing journal, which were based on information contained in the Institute for Scientific Information's Web of Knowledge Journal Citation Reports, were assigned to each article. We compared the number and proportion of articles published and the IF of radiology and nonradiology journals.

Results: Of the articles published by radiologists, 25.4% (1677/6598) in 2000 and 35.7% (4479/12,559) in 2010 were published in nonradiology journals. The articles were published in 552 and 1329 nonradiology journals in 2000 and 2010, respectively. The IFs of the nonradiology journals were significantly higher than those of the radiology journals (2.4 ± 3.0 vs 1.5 ± 1.2 in 2000 and 3.2 ± 3.8 vs 2.3 ± 1.4 in 2010; p < 0.0001). When we considered the subject categories, "Oncology," "Surgery," and "Neurosciences" accounted for the highest proportion of radiologic publications.

Conclusion: Radiologic publications in nonradiology journals have increased in terms of number, percentage, journal IF, and range of contributions.