Promotion to Top-Tier Journal and Development Strategy of the Annals of Laboratory Medicine for Strengthening its Leadership in the Medical Laboratory Technology Category: A Bibliometric Study

BACKGROUND: A bibliometric analysis of the Annals of Laboratory Medicine (ALM) was performed to understand its position in the medical laboratory technology category and to suggest a developmental strategy. METHODS: Journal metrics, including the number of articles by publication type, country of authors, total citations, 2-year impact factor, country of cited authors, journals citing ALM, and Hirsch-index, were obtained from the Journal Citation Report and Web of Science Core Collection. Target data included ALM content in the Web of Science from January 1, 2012, to October 5, 2021. Bibliometric analysis was performed using Biblioshiny. RESULTS: The impact factor increased from 1.481 in 2013 to 3.464 in 2020. Authors belonging to the USA, China, and Korea cited ALM articles the most. Plos One, Scientific Reports, and Frontiers in Microbiology most frequently cited ALM, besides ALM itself. The Hirsch-index was 34. The co-occurrence network of Keyword Plus indicated four clusters diagnosis, identification, prevalence, and risk. The conceptual structure map of Keyword Plus based on multiple correspondence analysis showed two clusters bacterial susceptibility at the bench and clinical courses. The co-citation network showed that ALM was in the cluster of the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, JAMA, and the Annals of Internal Medicine. The collaboration network showed that Korean authors collaborated mainly with authors from the USA, Germany, and Italy. CONCLUSIONS: The journal’s promotion to an international top-tier journal has been successful. “Principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing” and a preprint policy are yet to be added.