A Bibliometric Analysis of Highly Cited and High Impact Occupational Therapy Publications by American Authors

ABSTRACT

A bibliometric analysis was completed of peer-reviewed literature from 1991–2015, written by American occupational therapists, to examine US high impact scholarship with “occupational therapy” and “occupational therapist(s)” used as keywords to search journal articles' publication title, abstract, author details, and keywords. Results included 1,889 journal articles from 1991–2015 published by American occupational therapists as first or corresponding author. Sixty-nine articles attained a TotalCitation₂₀₁₅ ≥ 50 and 151 attained a Citation₂₀₁₅ ≥ 5 indicating that they were the most highly cited literature produced in this period. Although the majority (58%) of this literature was published in occupational therapy-specific journals, 41% was published in interdisciplinary journals. Results illustrate that the volume of highly cited American occupational therapy peer-reviewed literature has grown over the last two decades. There is need for the profession to strategize methods to enhance the publication metrics of occupational therapy-specific journals to reduce the loss of high quality publications to external periodicals.

KEYWORDS:

• Authors
• bibliometric
• journals
• publications
• SCI-Expanded
• SSCI

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this paper.

Research ethics

Exempt from IRB approval.

About the Authors

Sharon A. Gutman, PhD, Professor, Programs in Occupational Therapy, Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY, USA. Ted Brown, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences, Monash University – Peninsula Campus, Frankston, Victoria, Australia. Yuh-Shan Ho, PhD, Director, Trend Research Centre, Asia University, Taichung, Taiwan.