Using the Science Citation Index Expanded option from the Institute for Scientific Information's (ISI) Web of Science database, it was possible to construct a ranked list of the most cited articles from the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association in the last thirty years, from 1969 to 1998 (Table 1). The ranked list will change over time and reflects the citation patterns as a snapshot in time for the period ending August 13, 1999, when the citation searching was completed.
Table 1.
Top Bulletin articles—citation ranking
Marshall's classic 1992 study on the impact of hospital libraries in clinical decision making leads the list of most cited Bulletin articles by a wide margin. King's 1987 study of hospital libraries and clinical care is the second most cited study in the Bulletin, but is only one citation ahead of Algermissen's 1974 report on the initiation of the clinical medical librarian program at the University of Missouri–Kansas City. The highly cited articles reflect the changing interests of the profession over time including end-user searching, problem-based learning, telemedicine, information needs of physicians, clinical medical librarianship, and evidence-based medicine. Swanson's article on medical literature as a potential source of new medical knowledge is the most theoretical on the most cited list. Citations to this article in the ISI database range from the Journal of the American Society for Information Science to Computers in the Humanities.
Table 2 presents the most frequently cited article for each of the past thirty years from 1969 to 1998. This ranking also represents a snapshot in time for the period ending August 13, 1999. The most recent years are somewhat skewed due to the nature of citation patterns and will most likely change more dramatically than the earlier publication years as the more recent literature becomes better known to researchers and practitioners.
Table 2.
Most cited Bulletin articles—1969–1998
A periodic review of citation patterns to the Bulletin can provide interesting insights into the development of the profession over time and the use of the health sciences literature by our own and other disciplines.