Occupational Therapy Journals—The State of the Art

Abstract

One thousand seven hundred and forty six articles were analysed from the American Journal of Occupational Therapy (AJOT), the British Occupational Therapy Journal (BOTJ) and the Australian Occupational Therapy Journal (AOTJ). Article content, format and author status were documented. Results indicated that the primary topics addressed in these journals were related to physical, professional, paediatric and psychiatric issues, with growing interest occurring in professional, teaching, sensory integration and community practices. The chief authors were occupational therapy clinicians, however, the trends revealed this was declining with an increase in contributions from occupational therapy academics and students along with non occupational therapists. Finally, the format adopted by these authors was chiefly descriptive with a developing tendency towards more research‐based formats in BOTJ and AOTJ. These nevertheless still fell short of the percentage of research articles found in AJOT which remained consistently at about 32 percent.