Citation analysis of Physical Therapy. A special communication.

Abstract

To obtain information relevant to practice, physical therapists rely on a number of different sources, including contacts with students and colleagues, demonstrations, ward rounds, clinics, journals and other printed materials, discussions, in-service training, study groups, and formal instructional courses.1 Although physical therapists, like some human service professionals,2–5 may prefer and rely more on non-written sources of information than on publications,1 journals remain an extremely important source of information for practicing clinicians. Contributing to the importance of journals are their relative availability to physical therapists,1 their reliability and accuracy in comparison with personal experience and opinions,6 and their value as a primary medium for information communication. Professionals who realize the importance of journals to the communication of technical information and who are interested in such fields as mathematics, physics, botany, chemistry, engineering, veterinary medicine, physiology, agriculture, pharmacology, and pathology have conducted citation analyses to identify relevant “core journals.”7–11…