Using Bradford's law of scattering to identify the core journals of pediatric surgery

The study employed bibliometrics methods to analyse the scattering of 596 journals cited in legal master’s theses and doctoral dissertations in three South African law schools from 2014 to 2018. In addition, the study included an analysis of the extent of citation of different sources and examined the effect of use of non-legal journals by law students. It was found that students used 449.2 documents on average in writing a doctoral dissertation and 110.9 references per master’s thesis. Journals received more citations than any other document formats although 16 master’s theses were completed without citing a single journal. Generally, the journals cited in legal theses and dissertations conform to Bradford’s Law but they differ in their level of conformity by law school. There was a high degree of overlaps between Zone 1 journals in the three law schools. All journals in the core lists were available in all the law schools which was attributed to the strength of collections in these schools. The results support the application of bibliometric analyses to legal master’s theses and doctoral dissertations to make collection development decisions. In making those decisions, however, law librarians would have to look beyond the Zone 1 journals of their own institution for wider access. These results also serve as a caution to law librarians to look beyond the traditional law journals in de/selecting journals, as some of the non-legal journals in this study made it to the core list of cited periodicals. Furthermore, this study points to the strength of library collections in the top law school libraries in the country.

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Mapping the literature of health care management: an update

Journal of the Medical Library Association JMLA ◽

10.5195/jmla.2021.1121 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 109 (3) ◽

Author(s):

Amber T. Burtis ◽

Susan M. Howell ◽

Mary K. Taylor

Keyword(s):

Health Care ◽

Care Management ◽

Allied Health ◽

Health Care Management ◽

Bibliographic Databases ◽

Business Elite ◽

The Core ◽

Bradford’S Law ◽

Medical Library ◽

Highly Cited

Objective: This study aims to identify the core journals cited in the health care management literature and to determine their coverage in the foremost bibliographic databases used by the discipline.Methods: Using the methodology outlined by the Medical Library Association’s Nursing and Allied Health Resource Section (NAHRS) protocol for “Mapping the Literature of Nursing and Allied Health Professions,” this study updates an earlier study published in 2007. Cited references from articles published in a three-year range (2016–2018) were collected from five health care management journals. Using Bradford’s Law of Scattering, cited journal titles were tabulated and ranked according to the number of times cited. Eleven databases were used to determine coverage of the most highly cited journal titles for all source journals, as well as for a subset of practitioner-oriented journals.Results: The most highly cited sources were journals, followed by government documents, Internet resources, books, and miscellaneous resources. The databases with the most complete coverage of Zone 1 and 2 were Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, and PubMed, while the worst performing databases were Health Business Elite, ABI/Inform, and Business Source Complete.Conclusions: The literature of health care management has expanded rapidly in the last decade, with cumulative citations increasing by 76.6% and the number of cited journal titles increasing by nearly 70% since the original study. Coverage of the core journals in popular databases remains high, although specialized health care management and business databases did not perform as well as general or biomedical databases.

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Bradford's law: Identification of the core journals in the field of Indian chemical science literature

International Journal of Information Dissemination and Technology ◽

10.5958/2249-5576.2018.00022.5 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 8 (2) ◽

pp. 104

Author(s):

M Chaman Sab ◽

P. Dharani Kumar ◽

B.S. Biradar

Keyword(s):

Chemical Science ◽

Science Literature ◽

The Core ◽

Bradford’S Law

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Leadership in Pediatric Surgery from a Senior's Perspective

European Journal of Pediatric Surgery ◽

10.1055/s-0037-1602250 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 27 (03) ◽

pp. 234-239

Author(s):

Juan Tovar

Keyword(s):

Human Resources ◽

Personal Experience ◽

Pediatric Surgery ◽

Care Research ◽

Levels Of Care ◽

The Core ◽

And Diffusion ◽

Surgical Group

AbstractManagement of a pediatric surgical group involves organization, coordination, and direction of human resources in an attempt to achieve the best results in an efficient way. However, true leadership of such group should also involve inspiring it with a purpose. The superior interest of the patients and their families will be better served by achieving excellence at all levels of care, research, teaching, and diffusion of the results. These values are the core of the leader's action and may be difficult to develop in a hospital framework in which the main decisions are not always into his/her hands.This review summarizes a theory on leadership at large and then analyzes in detail the peculiarities that distinguish surgical and pediatric surgical departments from a corporation in an attempt to extend the application of the principles of leadership to these structures.Finally, the steps possibly taken by prospective leaders toward achieving that condition and some tips for the candidates based on the personal experience of the author are advanced.

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A technique to identify core journals for neurosurgery using citation scatter analysis and the Bradford distribution across neurosurgery journals

Journal of Neurosurgery ◽

10.3171/2013.8.jns122379 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 119 (5) ◽

pp. 1274-1287 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Venkatesh S. Madhugiri ◽

Sudheer Ambekar ◽

Shane F. Strom ◽

Anil Nanda

Keyword(s):

Impact Factor ◽

Current Knowledge ◽

Medical Science ◽

Medical Specialty ◽

Current Status ◽

The Core ◽

Bradford’S Law ◽

Citation Ranking ◽

Rank List ◽

Bradford Distribution

Object The volume of scientific literature doubles approximately every 7 years. The coverage of this literature provided by online compendia is variable and incomplete. It would hence be useful to identify “core” journals in any field and validate whether the h index and impact factor truly identify the core journals in every subject. The core journals in every medical specialty would be those that provide a current and comprehensive coverage of the science in that specialty. Identifying these journals would make it possible for individual physicians to keep abreast of research and clinical progress. Methods The top 10 neurosurgical journals (on the basis of impact factor and h index) were selected. A database of all articles cited in the reference lists of papers published in issues of these journals published in the first quarter of 2012 was generated. The journals were ranked based on the number of papers cited from each. This citation rank list was compared with the h index and impact factor rank lists. The rank list was also examined to see if the concept of core journals could be validated for neurosurgical literature using Bradford's law. Results A total of 22,850 papers spread across 2522 journals were cited in neurosurgical literature over 3 months. Although the top 10 journals were the same, irrespective of ranking criterion (h index, impact factor, citation ranking), the 3 rank lists were not congruent. The top 25% of cited articles obeyed the Bradford distribution; beyond this, there was a zone of increased scatter. Six core journals were identified for neurosurgery. Conclusions The core journals for neurosurgery were identified to be Journal of Neurosurgery, Neurosurgery, Spine, Acta Neurochirurgica, Stroke, and Journal of Neurotrauma. A list of core journals could similarly be generated for every subject. This would facilitate a focused reading to keep abreast of current knowledge. Collated across specialties, these journals could depict the current status of medical science.

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Bradford’s law: identification of the core journals for neurosurgery and its subspecialties

Journal of Neurosurgery ◽

10.3171/2015.3.jns15149 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 124 (2) ◽

pp. 569-579 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Garrett T. Venable ◽

Brandon A. Shepherd ◽

Christopher M. Loftis ◽

S. Gray McClatchy ◽

Mallory L. Roberts ◽

...

Keyword(s):

England Journal ◽

New England ◽

North American ◽

Radiation Oncology ◽

Original Research ◽

H Index ◽

The Core ◽

Bradford’S Law ◽

American Academic ◽

Highly Cited

OBJECT Bradford’s law describes the scatter of citations for a given subject or field. It can be used to identify the most highly cited journals for a field or subject. The objective of this study was to use currently accepted formulations of Bradford’s law to identify core journals of neurosurgery and neurosurgical subspecialties. METHODS All original research publications from 2009 to 2013 were analyzed for the top 25 North American academic neurosurgeons from each subspecialty. The top 25 were chosen from a ranked career h-index list identified from previous studies. Egghe’s formulation and the verbal formulation of Bradford’s law were applied to create specific citation density zones and identify the core journals for each subspecialty. The databases were then combined to identify the core journals for all of academic neurosurgery. RESULTS Using Bradford’s verbal law with 4 zone models, the authors were able to identify the core journals of neurosurgery and its subspecialties. The journals found in the most highly cited first zone are presented here as the core journals. For neurosurgery as a whole, the core included the following journals: Journal of Neurosurgery, Neurosurgery, Spine, Stroke, Neurology, American Journal of Neuroradiology, International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics, and New England Journal of Medicine. The core journals for each subspecialty are presented in the manuscript. CONCLUSIONS Bradford’s law can be used to identify the core journals of neurosurgery and its subspecialties. The core journals vary for each neurosurgical subspecialty, but Journal of Neurosurgery and Neurosurgery are among the core journals for each neurosurgical subspecialty.

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Studying document information flow on the information safety problems

Scientific and Technical Libraries ◽

10.33186/1027-3689-2019-6-51-70 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 51-70

Author(s):

V. Fedorenko ◽

N. Mishurov ◽

D. Demidov ◽

Yu. Chavykin

Keyword(s):

Impact Factor ◽

Information Flow ◽

Russian Science ◽

The Core ◽

Bradford’S Law ◽

Russian Science Citation Index ◽

Information Safety ◽

Document Flow ◽

The Impact ◽

Information Significance

The national document flow in the area of information safety is analyzed based on the Russian Science Citation Index database for 1993–2017. Its volume makes over 18,000 entries including up to 59% articles and conference proceeding (28%). The flow dynamics demonstrates its annual growth – it is ahead of other science information flows in the number of documents. The dispersion of publications in periodicals in 2016 is characterized; the dependence of the information flow completeness from the number of sources is considered. The findings of microflow study have proved the provision of S. Bradford’s law of the periodicals division into three zones. The “core” comprises 52 journals, primarily in the related sectors rather than those specializing in the mentioned area which evidences on the vibrant interdisciplinary character of the problem. The authors characterize information significance of the most productive journals using such indicators as the 2-year impact-factor and the number of article loads. It was found that the impact-factor as a criteria of journal influence was in the range 0.040–1.435, while the number of loads was from 252 to 56,041. The accessibility of the “core” journals in the RSCI as related to the availability of full texts and the open access and their coverage by RSCI, WoS and Scopus databases are discussed.

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Serials use in post graduates’ dissertations of pharmaceutical sciences: collection building by citation analysis

Collection Building ◽

10.1108/cb-02-2015-0004 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 34 (3) ◽

pp. 94-101 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Aragudige Nagaraja ◽

A.B Prashanth

Keyword(s):

Open Access ◽

Citation Analysis ◽

Health Science ◽

Pharmaceutical Sciences ◽

Content Type ◽

The Core ◽

Bradford’S Law ◽

Online Journals ◽

Open Access Journals ◽

The Impact

Purpose – This study aims to analyze the resources used in the citations of 156 postgraduate dissertations submitted to the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences (RGUHS) through the Acharya & BM Reddy College of Pharmacy (ABMRCP), and prepares the core journal list according to the Bradford’s law of scattering. For any research and academic institutional libraries, books and journals are considered as key resources. As the resources are more and diverse, collection building is a tough task for librarians. Citation analysis is one of the best methods to list the most used resources by the users. The paper highlights the extent use of in-house resources and open access journals in the citations. Design/methodology/approach – Citations of PG dissertations during 2010-2013 (four years) were compiled, the data about the resources cited in each were taken and the list of resources used in PG dissertations was prepared. The list of core journals obtained by citation analysis was matched with the list of online journals provided by Health Science Library & Information Network (HELINET) of RGUHS as well as print list of journals subscribed by ABMRCP Library, and evaluated the print and online consortia journals used by ABMRCP community. The list of core journals’ ranking in the SCImago Journal & Country Rank (SJR) list-pharmaceutical sciences was identified to know the impact of the journals. Findings – The study gives the list of different information resources cited in the pharmacy dissertations. The core list obtained by applying the Bradford’s law of scattering in this study has 19 journals pertaining to pharmacy. After matching the core list with the Keogh’s list, it is found that 31 journals can be considered very useful in the field of pharmacy. Twelve journals listed in the core list have different positions in the SJR ranking 2013. The results indicate that open-access journals with online journals subscribed through HELINET and print holdings have been cited more in the PG dissertations. Originality/value – The topic of journal use in this case may be of greatest interest to those who purchase journals in the sciences and, very specifically, the pharmaceutical sciences.

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