A 10-year performance trajectory of top nutrition journals’ impact factors

BACKGROUND AND AIM: This study was performed to evaluate the impact factors (IFs) and total citations of ISI-indexed nutrition journals in a 10-year period from 1999 to 2008 in order to assess the quality of nutrition journals. MATERIALS AND METHODS: For this retrospective study, the IF and total citation data from 1998 to 2008 were collected through Journal Citation Reports of Thomson Scientific Corporation Web of Knowledge. We selected five highly cited journals in the “nutrition and dietetics” category for our analysis. These journals include Annual Reviews in Nutrition (ANNU REV NUTR), American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN), Progress in Lipid Research (PROG LIPID RES), Journal of Nutrition (J NUTR), and International Journal of Obesity (INT J OBESITY) RESULTS: All five selected journals were ranked as one of the top ten “nutrition and dietetics” journals between 1999 and 2008 in ISI database. Most of selected journals’ IF had an upward trend during the 10-year period with fluctuation in some cases. AJCN consistently received the greatest number of total citations during the study period, although its IF was not the highest among the five journals studied. CONCLUSION: The IF illustrated changes in relative rankings of five highly cited journals included in the “nutrition and dietetics” category of the Web of Knowledge. Rank according to the absolute number of citations received, however, did not correlate with rank according to IF.