Factors Associated With Low and High Article Citations in the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Literature

Abstract

We assessed the factors in reported oral and maxillofacial surgery (OMS) studies associated with the number of citations. We identified all primary research studies reported from 1998 to 2008 in the International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, Journal of Oral Maxillofacial Surgery (JOMS), British Journal of Oral Maxillofacial Surgery (BJOMS), and Journal of Craniomaxillofacial Surgery. Of the identified studies, 66 had obtained only 0 to 3 citations in the 10years after publication. We compared these lowest cited reports with the 66 highest cited reports. The characteristics of the lowest and highest cited studies were compared using bivariate analysis. Logistic regression analysis using generalized estimating equations was conducted to examine the association between the selected article-, author-, and journal-level characteristics and high citations. On the initial bivariate analysis, highly cited studies were associated with greater abstract and manuscript word counts (P<.0001), manuscript pages (P<.0001), figures (P=.0482), sample sizes (P=.0149), and references (P<.0001). They were also more likely to have reported a significant result (P=.0202), been published in JOMS (P=.0405), and covered topics such as dentoalveolar/implantology and trauma/reconstruction (P=.0002). Lowly cited articles were more likely to have been published in BJOMS (P=.0405) and addressed topics unrelated to core OMS procedures (P=.0002). The H-indexes of the first and corresponding authors were greater in the high-citation group (P<.0001). After multivariate analysis, a greater number of manuscript pages (P=.0015) and classification as dentoalveolar/implantology (P=.0017) or trauma/reconstruction (P=.0368) had greater odds of high citations. In addition, a higher H-index for the first author made it more likely to be in the high-citation group (P=.0397). Relatively few studies in the OMS literature failed to produce citations in the 10years after publication, indicating that most studies accepted for publication provide meaningful contributions. Significant differences were found between the highest and lowest cited publications, suggesting that study design and article structure might influence the articles' audience and effect.