A total of 484 articles published in World Journal of Gastroenterology are cited by 361 ISI-SCI covered journals distributed in 38 countries during 1998-2003

Abstract

Articles published in the World Journal of Gastroenterology (WJG) have been cited by 361 SCI covered journals, 44.59% of which are journals in the USA and 3.60% in China. Authors from 484 institutions have cited WJG, in which 22.58% of them are in the USA and 18.84% in China. The highest impact factor of SCI journals that have cited WJG is 28.740 (Nature Medicine), with 52.95% (n=170) of journals with an impact factor over 2.0. The total citation times of articles published in WJG during 1998-2003 were 484. The total citation times in 2003 were 2736 with 73.24% (2004) self-citation, 1486 in 2002 with 94.27% (1401) self-citation, 537 in 2001 with 92.92% (499) self-citation, 238 in 2000 with 92.43% (220) self-citation and 24 in 1999 with 33.33% (8) self-citation. Articles published in WJG in 2002 were cited 85 times by other SCI covered journals, and 82 articles were cited. The number was increased to 372 and 332 for articles published in 2003, respectively, with increase rates of 337.64% and 304.87%, respectively. Authors who have cited WJG are from 37 countries, and the journals that have cited WJG are from 21 countries. A total of 1 020 (57.46%) articles published in WJG were supported by international or national grants. Authors of WJG articles are from 40 countries. Articles published in issues 5-12 in 2003 have been downloaded 53 476 times online. In 2002, WJG was awarded a special grant from National Natural Science Foundation of China. Generally, the percentage of the self-citation times of articles published in WJG declined from 94.27% in 2002 to 73.24% in 2003. Meanwhile, article numbers and times cited by other SCI covered journals rose to 304.87% and 337.64% respectively. The above data suggested that the WJG underwent rapid development in 2003 with a significant increase in both numbers of cited articles and times of citation.

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INTRODUCTION

World Journal of Gastroenterology (WJG ISSN-1007-9327) is an international academic journal in digestology published in China. The WJG was established in 1995 under the name of China National Journal of New Gastroenterology, and adapted its present title in 1998[1]. The WJG, now published semimonthly by the WJG Press, is a 210 mm × 297 mm-sized journal with 160 pages in each issue. The Journal is distributed by the Beijing Newspaper and Periodical Subscription and Distribution Bureau (Postal Issuance Code 82-261). In response to continuing growth in both basic and clinical studies on digestive diseases and the increasing demands for the international exchange in science and technology, the WJG will be published weekly from January 2005, with 160 pages in each issue. The publication dates are on the 7^th, 14^th, 21^th and 28^th of each month. Center for Information Analysis, Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China conducted a general assessment on the SCI citation, source of manuscripts, and grant support of the articles published in the WJG during 1998-2004 (issues 1-6), based on the information from ISI SCI, ISI JCR and Citation Report of Chinese Journals of Science and Technology. The assessment report is as follows.

CITATIONS OF ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN WJG BY SCI COVERED JOURNALS

Articles published in WJG have been cited 5 021 times, of which the total citation times in 2003 were 2 736 with 73.24% (2004) self-citation, 1 486 in 2002 with 94.27% (1401) self-citation, 537 in 2001 with 92.92% (499) self-citation, 238 in 2000 with 92.43% (220) self-citation and 24 in 1999 with 33.33% (8) self-citation. Citations have been consistently increasing. However, the increase in self-citations is signifi-cantly lower than the increase in total citations (Figure 1).

Figure 1 Increase in self-citations is significantly lower than the increase in total citations.

CHANGING TREND IN OVERALL TIMES AND NUMBERS OF ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN WJG CITED BY SCI COVERED JOURNALS

Articles published in WJG in 2002 were cited by other SCI covered journals 85 times, and 82 articles were cited. The numbers were increased to 372 and 332 for articles published in 2003, respectively, with an increase rate of 338% and 305%, respectively (Figure 2, Table 1).

Table 1 Overall times and numbers of articles cited by other SCI covered journals.

Year	2003	2002	2001	2000	1999	1998
Number of cited articles	332	82	38	17	16	0
Number of citations	372	85	38	18	16	0

Figure 2 Changing trend in overall times and numbers of articles published in WJG between 1998 and 2003 cited by other SCI covered journals.

GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION AND NUMBERS OF SCI COVERED JOURNALS THAT HAVE CITED ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN WJG

Overall, 361 SCI covered journals in 21 countries including 161 (44.59%) journals in the USA have cited articles published in WJG (Table 2).

Table 2 Geographic distribution and numbers of SCI covered journals that have cited articles published in WJG between 1998 and February 2004.

List	Country	Number of journals
1	United States	161
2	United Kingdom	78
3	Netherlands	24
4	Germany	15
5	China	13
6	Switzerland	8
7	Denmark	7
8	France	7
9	Greece	6
10	Australia	5
11	Japan	5
12	Ireland	4
13	Poland	3
14	Italy	3
15	Spain	3
16	Norway	2
17	Brazil	2
18	South Korea	2
19	Singapore	1
20	India	1
21	Austria	1

Of the 361 journals, 10 journals’ publishing countries are unknown.

IMPACT FACTORS OF SCI COVERED JOURNALS THAT HAVE CITED ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN WJG

Overall, 361 SCI covered journals have cited articles published in WJG between 1998 and February 2004 (Table 3). Of these journals 321 (88.92%) with an impact factor ranged from 0.160 (Progress in Biochemistry and Biophysics) to 28.740 (Nutare Medicine). The impact factor was not available for other 40 journals. The impact factors of the 321 journals are shown in Figure 3.

Table 3 Impact factors of SCI covered journals that have cited articles published in WJG.

Impact factor	Number of journals (%)
20.699-28.740	4 (1.24)
10.321-18.772	12 (3.73)
6.073-9.825	20 (6.23)
5.095-5.991	14 (6.30)
4.039-4.974	19 (7.88)
3.008-3.991	46 (14.33)
2.013-2.980	55 (17.13)
1.000-1.990	78 (24.29)
0.160-0.996	73 (22.74)

Figure 3 Geographic distribution of authors and articles in other SCI covered journals that have cited articles published in WJG.

GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF AUTHORS AND ARTICLES IN OTHER SCI COVERED JOURNALS THAT HAVE CITED ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN WJG

Overall, 484 articles by authors of SCI covered journals from 37 countries have cited articles published in WJG, of which 133 (22.58%) were from the United States and 111 (18.84%) from China (Figure 3 and Table 4).

Table 4 Geographic distribution of authors and articles in other SCI covered journals that have cited articles published in WJG.

List	Country of authors	Number of articles
1	United States	133
2	China	111
3	Japan	38
4	Germany	35
5	United Kingdom	35
6	Italy	17
7	France	15
8	Australia	11
9	Spain	10
10	Sweden	8
11	Poland	7
12	South Korea	7
13	Netherlands	7
14	Canada	7
15	Belgium	5
16	Singapore	4
17	Austria	3
18	Greece	3
19	Hungary	3
20	Ireland	2
21	Brazil	2
22	Finland	2
23	Norway	2
24	Switzerland	2
25	Turkey	2
26	India	2
27	Czech Republic	1
28	Croatia	1
29	Slovakia	1
30	Argentina	1
31	Pakistan	1
32	Denmark	1
33	Cuba	1
34	Malaysia	1
35	South Africa	1
36	Thailand	1
37	New zealand	1

DISTRIBUTION OF INSTITUTIONS OF AUTHORS WHO HAVE CITED ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN WJG

The authors who have cited articles published in WJG between 1998 and 2003 are from 484 institutions, including the world famous universities and institutes such as Washington University, Yale University, Cornell University, University of Minnesota, Stanford University, University of California, National Institute of Health and University of London (Table 5).

Table 5 Distribution of institutions of authors who have cited articles published in WJG.

List	Country	Higher educational institutions	Research institutions	Medical institutions	Companies	Number of articles
1	United States	91	13	18	11	133
2	China	89	13	6	3	111
3	Japan	30	4	2	2	38
4	Germany	27	4	3	1	35
5	United Kingdom	24	2	3	4	33
6	Italy	13	3	0	1	17
7	France	5	5	5	0	15
8	Australia	7	1	3	0	11
9	Spain	7	1	2	0	10
10	Canada	2	2	1	2	7

CITING STATUS OF ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN WJG

Self-citations have been decreased from 6.19 per article published in WJG in 2002 to 3.16 in 2003 and 3.15 in February 2004. The rate decreased from 12.68% in 2001 to 8.84% and 8.61%, respectively, in 2003 and 2004 (Figure 4 and Table 6).

Figure 4 Citing status of articles published in WJG.

Table 6 Citing status of articles published in WJG.

Year	Volume	Issue	Articles	Total citations	Average citations per article	Self citations	Average self citation per article	Self citation rate (%)
1998	4	1-6	183	2115	11.55	0	0	0
1999	5	1-6	146	2125	14.55	8	0.05	0.37
2000	6	1-6	212	6205	29.26	220	1.03	3.54
2001	7	1-6	173	8884	51.35	499	2.88	5.61
2002	8	1-6	226	11444	50.63	1401	6.19	12.68
2003	9	1-12	634	22657	35.73	2004	3.16	8.84
2004	10	1-6	201	7309	36.54	630	3.15	8.61

GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION AND GRANT INFORMATION OF MANUSCRIPTS ACCEPTED FOR PUBLICATION IN WJG

Of the 1775 articles published from 1998 to issue 6, 2004, 1020 (57.46%) were supported by various international and national research grants (Figure 5, Figure 6, and Figure 7).

Figure 5 Geographic distribution of authors of manuscripts accepted for publication in WJG.

Figure 6 Numbers and percentage of articles with research grants published in WJG.

Figure 7 Number and percentage of the National Natural Science Foundation of China articles supported by published in WJG.

ONLINE VISITING AND DOWNLOADING OF ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN WJG

A total of 436 articles published in issues 5-12, 2003 have been downloaded online with a total downloading number of 53476 times. One article has been downloaded 2255 times[2] (Table 7).

Table 7 Online visiting and downloading of articles published in WJG.

Total articles	Articles visited	Articles downloaded	Total visits	Total downloads	Average visits per article	Average downloads per article
603	582	582	127 760	64 145	219.51	110.21

GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION OF AUTHORS OF ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN WJG

Authors of WJG are from 40 countries (Table 8).

Table 8 Geographic distribution and numbers of authors of articles published in WJG.

List	Country	Number
1	China	8 232
2	Japan	198
3	United States	190
4	Germany	125
5	Turkey	116
6	Italy	106
7	United Kingdom	69
8	Singapore	50
9	South Korea	39
10	Hungary	35
11	Australia	32
12	Poland	29
13	Belgium	23
14	India	21
15	South africa	20
16	Netherlands	17
17	Brazil	16
18	Greece	16
19	Sweden	15
20	Finland	14
21	Thailand	14
22	Canada	13
23	Iran	13
24	Pakistan	11
25	Yugoslavia	11
26	Spain	11
27	Israel	11
28	Argentina	9
29	Russia	9
30	Croatia	8
31	Ireland	6
32	Saudi Arabia	5
33	France	4
34	Norway	4
35	Switzerland	3
36	New Zealand	2
37	Egypt	1
38	Estonia	1
39	Denmark	1
40	Dominica	1

HONORS AWARDED TO WJG

The WJG is nationally recognized as a core journal in national natural science and an outstanding journal in science and technology, with an honor of the 2nd National Journal Award, and was listed as one of the 100 most important journals in China. In 2001, it was selected into the China Journal Square consisting of “200” journals. It was awarded a specific project grant as one of the key academic journals by the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2002 (Project Grant No. 30224801).

OVERALL ASSESSMENT COMMENTS

(1) Total citation times of articles published in WJG in January and February 2004 by SCI covered journals were 560, in which self-citation rate was 77.67% (435). The total citation times in 2003 were 2736 with 73.24% (2004) self-citation, 1486 in 2002 with 94.27% (1401) self-citation, 537 in 2001 with 92.92% (499) self-citation, 238 in 2000 with 92.43% (220) self-citation and 42 in 1999 with 33.33% (8) self-citation. No data were available in 1998; (2) Article number and times cited by other SCI covered journals were 82 and 85 in 2002, 332 and 372 in 2003, and 104 and 125 in January and February 2004, respectively; (3) Overall, 361 SCI covered journals in 21 countries including 161 (44.59%) journals in the United States have cited articles published in WJG; (4) Journals that have cited WJG include 11 SCI covered journals with a high impact factor; i.e., Nature Medicine (IF 28.740), Cell (IF 27.254), Nature Reviews Neuroscience (IF 24.047), Nature Cell Biology (IF 20.699), Gene and Development (IF 18.772), Lancet (IF 15.397), Nature Neuroscience (IF 14.857), Neuron (IF 13.846), Nature Reviews Cancer (IF 13.625), Gastroenterology (IF 13.440) and Hepatology (IF 9.825). The impact factors of the journals that have cited WJG are as follows: 20.699-28.740 (4, 1.24%), 10.321-18.772 (12, 3.73%), 6.073-9.825 (20, 6.23%), 5.095-5.991 (14, 6.30%), 4.039-4.974 (19, 7.88%), 3.008-3.991 (46, 14.33%), 2.013-2.980 (55, 17.13%), 1.000-1.990 (78, 24.29%) and 0.160-0.996 (73, 22.74%); (5) Overall, 484 articles by authors of SCI covered journals from 37 countries have cited articles published in WJG; 133 (22.58%) from the United States and 111 (18.84%) from China; (6) The authors who have cited WJG are from 484 research institutions, including the world famous universities and institutes, such as Washington University School of Medicine, Yale University, Cornell University, University of Minnesota, Stanford University Center of Medicine, University of California at San Francisco, National Institute of Health and Imperial College, University of London; (7) Self-citations have decreased from 6.19 per article published in WJG in 2002 to 3.16 in 2003 and 3.15 in February 2004; (8) Of the 1775 articles published from 1998 to issue 6, 2004, 1020 (57.46%) were supported by various international and national research grants; (9) Authors of WJG are from 40 countries; (10) A total of 436 articles published in issues 5-12, 2003 have been downloaded online with a total downloading number of 53476 times. One article has been downloaded 2255 times[2]; and (11) In 2002, WJG was awarded a special grant (No. 30224801) from National Natural Science Foundation of China.

In conclusion, WJG has been established its position as a regional and international English journal in gastroenterology, with increasing international influence. Despite high self citations over the past years, it appears that both self citations and self citation rate are rapidly decreasing.