Abstract
AIM: To analyze papers published in the World Journal of Gastroenterology (WJG) from 2006 to 2007. We investigated the highly cited papers for geographic distribution of the cited authors, as well as the distribution of the citing journals and year of citation. METHODS: Papers published in WJG from 2006 to 2007 and their citations were retrieved from the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE). The papers and their citations were analyzed according to bibliometric methods, including the number of citations for a given paper, the distribution of the highly cited papers, the geographic distribution of the cited authors, and the years of citation. RESULTS: Two thousand five hundred and six papers published in WJG from 2006 to 2007 were collected through SCIE, and 2335 of these were categorized as articles, reviews or proceedings. In 2006 and 2007, the average citation rate was 85.08% and 70.48%, respectively, and the average number of citations per paper was 4.33 and 2.51. Among the 2506 papers, 1963 were cited 8788 times by other articles. The mean number of citations per paper was 3.51. The papers with over three citations accounted for 54.72% of all those that were cited, and the total number of citations accounted for 85.38% of the total of 8788 citations. Thirteen papers were cited over 30 times and the highest number of citations for any one paper was 98. The cited authors came from 70 different countries or regions, with China, Japan and the United States being the most frequent. The highest average citation rate and number of citations per paper were for authors from Canada (96.30%, 6.89), Hungary (92.31%, 5.62), Australia (88.46%, 5.46), Germany (87.04%, 5.33), and Spain (87.50%, 5.11). The impact factor was 2.081 and the self-citation rate was 9.41% in 2008. The papers published in WJG in 2006-2007 were cited by 1597 journals. CONCLUSION: The papers in WJG have a high number of citations, and have been cited in numerous journals by authors from various countries. The results imply that WJG has an influential academic profile in gastroenterology around the world.