Journal of Addiction Research & Therapy
Open Access

Abstract

In conjunction with publication records, more and more weight is put on citations in determining research productivity by individuals, universities and even nations. This topic is widely discussed and debated within psychiatry but without much empirical evidence to draw on. We felt it was important to examine this issue by analyzing publication output and citations in a range of psychiatry journals. We investigated research productivity and citation practices at both country and university level. We found large differences between and within countries in terms of their research productivity in psychiatry. In addition, the ranking of countries and institutions differed widely by whether productivity was assessed by total research records published, overall citations these received, or citations per paper. We found that most publications came from the USA, with Germany being second and UK third in productivity. USA articles received most citations and the highest citation rate with an average 11.5 citations per article. The UK received the second highest absolute number of citations, but came fourth by citation rate (9.7 citations/article), following the Netherlands (11.4 citations/article) and Canada (9.8 citations/article). Within the USA, Harvard University published most articles and these articles were the most cited, on average 20.0 citations per paper. In Europe, UK institutions published and were cited most often. The Institute of Psychiatry/Kings College London was the leading institution in terms of number of published records and overall citations, while Oxford University had the highest citation rate (18.5 citations/record). The choice of measures of scientific output could be important in determining how research output translates into decisions about resource allocation.

Biography