An evaluation of author productivity in international radiography journals 2004–2011

INTRODUCTION: Radiography, the allied health profession, has changed beyond recognition over the last century; however, in academic terms radiography is a relatively young profession. It is therefore still establishing its professional knowledge base. This article uses peer-review author productivity distribution to evaluate its scholarly maturity. METHODS: Four peer-reviewed journals in medical radiation sciences were examined over an 8-year period (2004–2011) and author productivity was compared to Lotka's law. Further analysis of the most prolific authors provided an evaluation of their characteristics. RESULTS: The 1306 unique authors contributed 835 articles during the study period. Of these, 1012 (77.5%) contributed only one article to the journals studied, with an inverse power relationship of author productivity. At the 0.1 level of significance, radiography does not fit Lotka's law (n = −2.334; c = 0.712; D(max) = 0.0627; Critical threshold = 0.0337). There was a significant correlation between the most prolific authors and collaboration (P = 0.002), although variation was noted in author discipline and location. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study add to the discussion of radiography scholarship and demonstrate that the radiography authors have similar productivity distribution to other professions, but do not follow Lotka's law.