Bibliometric Analysis of Manuscript Characteristics That Influence Citations: A Comparison of Six Major Radiology Journals

OBJECTIVE. The objective of our study was to investigate radiology manuscript characteristics that influence citation rate, capturing features of manuscript construction that are discrete from study design. MATERIALS AND METHODS. Consecutive articles published from January 2004 to June 2004 were collected from the six major radiology journals with the highest impact factors: Radiology (impact factor, 5.076), Investigative Radiology (2.320), American Journal of Neuroradiology (AJNR) (2.384), RadioGraphics (2.494), European Radiology (2.364), and American Journal of Roentgenology (2.406). The citation count for these articles was retrieved from the Web of Science, and 29 article characteristics were tabulated manually. A point-biserial correlation, Spearman rank-order correlation, and multiple regression model were performed to predict citation number from the collected variables. RESULTS. A total of 703 articles—211 published in Radiology, 48 in Investigative Radiology, 106 in AJNR, 52 in RadioGraphics, 12...