Public health citation patterns: an analysis of the American Journal of Public Health, 2003-2005.
OBJECTIVE
The research sought to determine the publication types cited most often in public health as well as the most heavily cited journal titles.


METHODS
From a pool of 33,449 citations in 934 articles published in the 2003-2005 issues of American Journal of Public Health, 2 random samples were drawn: one (n = 1,034) from the total set of citations and one (n = 1,016) from the citations to journal articles. For each sampled citation, investigators noted publication type, publication date, uniform resource locator (URL) citation (yes/no), and, for the journal article sample, journal titles. The cited journal titles were analyzed using Bradford zones.


RESULTS
The majority of cited items from the overall sample of 1,034 items were journal articles (64.4%, n = 666), followed by government documents (n = 130), books (n = 122), and miscellaneous sources (n = 116). Publication date ranged from 1826-2005 (mean = 1995, mode = 2002). Most cited items were between 0 and 5 years old (50.3%, n = 512). In the sample of 1,016 journal article citations, a total of 387 journal titles were cited.


CONCLUSIONS
Analysis of cited material types revealed results similar to citation analyses in specific public health disciplines, including use of materials from a wide range of disciplines, reliance on miscellaneous and government documents, and need for older publications.
Rethlefsen
Melissa L
ML
Education Technology Librarian, Mayo Clinic Libraries, Mayo Clinic, 200 First Street SW, Rochester, MN 55905, USA. mlrethlefsen@gmail.com
Wallis
Lisa C
LC
D000043:Abstracting and Indexing; D015706:Bibliometrics; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D018156:Journalism, Medical; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011634:Public Health; D014481:United States