Abstract
This report reviews the literature on cigarette smoking published in Preventive Medicine over the past 50 years. The goal is twofold. First, to acknowledge the 50(th) anniversary of Preventive Medicine and its role in disseminating research on cigarette smoking by providing an abridged summary of smoking research published in the journal from inception through June 23, 2022. Second, to review experimental reports to identify contributions to innovations in tobacco control and regulatory efforts to reduce smoking, the theme of the special issue for which this review is an invited contribution. We searched PubMed using the search terms cigarette/cigarettes, tobacco products, smoking, smoking cessation, Preventive Medicine. Titles and abstracts were reviewed in duplicate, excluding reports not addressing cigarette smoking. Included reports were categorized by study type (original study, commentary, review). Experimental articles were assessed for impact using iCite, a National Institutes of Health web application that provides bibliometric information for articles in defined topic areas. The review identified 1,181 articles on cigarette smoking: 1,018 original studies (86.2%), 107 literature reviews (9.1%), and 56 commentaries (4.7%); 166 of the 1,018 original studies (16%) were experimental reports. In the iCite analysis these 166 experimental articles received 6,366 total citations, a mean (standard error) citation rate/article of 38.35 (±3.21) and mean relative citation ratio of 1.85 (±0.17) which is at the 73(rd) percentile for NIH-funded field- and time-normalized reports. Overall, this review demonstrates an ongoing and impactful contribution of Preventive Medicine to efforts to reduce cigarette smoking, the most preventable cause of premature death.