Approximation to the impact of biomedical journals in pediatric sciences: study of bibliometric indicators in the Journal Citation Reports-Science Citation Index 2009

Introduction: the Impact Factor (IF) is the most commonly used bibliometric index. The objective of this paper is to carry out a scientometric analysis of Paediatric journals included in 2009 Journal Citation Reports (JCR) Science Edition.

Material and methods: 63 Biomedical and Health Science categories of 2009 JCR Science Edition have been analysed by means of Web of Knowledge platform. Bibliometric indexes: number of journals, number of articles, total cites, IF, Immediacy Index, Cited Half-Life and the most IF journals of each category have been identified. Paediatric category journals and Anales de Pediatria, the only Paediatric Spanish journal in JCR 2009 Science Edition, have been accurately analysed.

Results: 94 journals covered in 2009 JCR Paediatrics category were analysed, which have published 12,648 articles and have been cited 297,188 times. The mean IF was 1.406, Immediacy Index was 0.344 and Cited Half-Life was 7.2. Twenty-nine journals had an IF between 0 and 0.999, 37 journals an IF between 1 and 1.999, 24 journals an IF between 2 and 3.999, and finally, 4 journal had an IF > 4. J Am Acad Child Psy (4.983) presented the highest IF, followed by Arch Pediatr Adol Med (4.726) and Pediatrics (4.687). Pediatrics was the most productive journal (752 articles), followed by J Pediatr Surg (512) and Pediatric Blood & Cancer (398). 56 percent of journals were from the USA and English was the main language for 95 percent of surveyed journals. Anales de Pediatría was the only Spanish journal, indexed since 2009 which an IF of 0.363, ranked 89^th of 94 in Paediatric category and 43.^th of 59 among Spanish journals indexed in 2009 JCR Science Edition.

Conclusions: paediatric journals have an acceptable representation in 2009 JCR Science Edition database (310 of 7,347 journals). Paediatric category scientometric indicators were rather moderate compared to biomedical and Health Science categories. Anales de Pediatria has been included in JCR since 2009, so the first step is done. Editorial strategies for improvement of quality, importance and journal impact are discussed. Numerous criticisms have been made of the use of an impact factor due to its limitations. IF must be carefully analysed, from a multidimensional perspective considering IF is highly discipline dependent.