Impact factors in urology. How well do our journals stack up against other medical and surgical journals?
BACKGROUND
The purpose of our analysis was to assess the performance of urological journals in terms of the standardized measures created by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) Journal Citation Report (JCR) in comparison to other medical and surgical fields. Additionally, an evaluation of all original articles, clinical or experimental, published in the year 2005, assessing the time interval needed from submission to publication, submission to acceptance, and acceptance to publication of a manuscript was conducted for all urologic journals.


METHODS
The study was conducted with the help of the ISI JCR and the University of Erlangen Medical Center's library (and on-line library).


RESULTS
The field of urology demonstrates satisfactory measures created by the (ISI) JCR in comparison with various fields of medicine. In comparison with the surgical field, urological journals demonstrate outstanding results.


CONCLUSIONS
The impact factor is a measure of the importance of scientific journals. Urological journals stack up quite well against other medical and especially surgical journals.
Labanaris
Apostolos P
AP
Department of Urology, Martha Maria Medical Center, Academic Hospital of Erlangen University, Nuremberg, Germany. Labanaris@web.de
Kuhn
Reinhard
R
Schott
Gunter E
GE
Zugor
Vahudin
V
D015706:Bibliometrics; D006801:Humans; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D014572:Urology