bmc public health impact factor

bmc public health impact factor

The Impact of BMC Public Health on Health Research

1. Introduction

An important initiative to evaluate the above questions has been the launch of a portfolio of Health Research journals by BioMed Central (BMC) in 2006. This was in response to a recognized need for open access journals that could be freely accessed by researchers and policymakers based in less economically developed countries, as well as those working in international and global health. These journals utilize article processing charges (APCs) as their sole source of revenue, thus enabling all articles to be accessed freely by readers. This is in contrast to the subscription or hybrid journals that traditionally publish the bulk of epidemiological and public health research. Now, nearly 4 years since the launch of these journals, it is an opportune time to evaluate the impact of the open access platform provided by these journals on the global visibility and information uptake of Health Research. Such an assessment is important for both BMC and public health research communities. Open access journals are becoming an increasingly popular choice for researchers wishing to reach the widest audience with their work, yet until now there has been little information on how this compares with more traditional modes of publication.

The use of open access publications has significantly enhanced opportunities for translational research. This is a crucial platform where novel work can be widely disseminated, thus facilitating timely implementation of evidence in healthcare policy and practice. Furthermore, given the substantial public or charitable funding for healthcare research, open access publication can increase the likelihood that the public will have access to the outcomes of research that they have ultimately funded. There remains, however, a need for investigation into the impacts of open access publications on research outcomes. This includes whether visibility afforded via open access publication leads to higher citations, the types of articles that are more highly accessed, and whether more diverse audiences are reached. These questions are also pertinent to debates on how best public health researchers can optimize dissemination of their data to influence policy and practice, as well as the broader evidence and knowledge base.

2. Importance of BMC Public Health Impact Factor

The importance of the impact factor is well documented in a number of articles. It is designed to measure the importance of a particular journal or article in its field. Often, a high impact factor can act as a proxy for the importance of research within its field and can often be used as a cut-off point in job applications and funding allocation. Moreover, impact factors are now being used in the UK Research Assessment Exercise to assess the quality of research. Time et al emphasizes the importance of submitting to journals with a high impact factor so that the findings can reach a wider audience. He claims that there is “little point to conducting research if the end result is rarely read or cannot be easily found”. This is a particularly pertinent statement in the global health research field. Often, researchers from low and middle-income countries are conducting research on issues which are truly relevant to them. Globalization has meant that there are a number of global health issues which went far beyond their point of origin. It is crucial that research from the developing world can be found easily by other researchers in the field, e.g. if a malaria researcher in Africa can easily access the latest research findings on malaria eradication in African regional journals, it can prevent him from unnecessarily duplicating research. Often, the only research on global health issues can be found in theses and grey literature from international organizations. By persuading these researchers to publish said findings in global health journals, it is more likely to be accessed by someone who can use the information. Often, these people are policymakers or clinicians who may not know where to start looking for research on said topic. Therefore, the article being available to people not just within the research community but also to those who can implement the findings is very important.

3. Key Findings and Contributions

The observation that the Journal Impact Factor is a poor tool for assessing the value of individual research articles is part of a more general critique of this metric, which is based on the assumption that the JIF is related in some way to the importance and/or influence of a research article. Although this assumption is widespread, there is little evidence to support it and much evidence against it. The JIF is a journal-level metric that is calculated by taking the average number of times an article in a particular journal has been cited, over a specific time period. Using the JIF as a measure of a research article’s value is therefore fundamentally flawed because it attributes the JIF to each individual article in the journal, implying that each article has been cited this number of times when in fact citation distributions are highly skewed, even within a particular journal. In any given year, the majority of articles in a journal will have a citation count quite different from the JIF and in previous studies we have demonstrated that many articles in high JIF journals are rarely cited while many articles in low JIF journals are highly cited. This links to more general concerns about over-reliance on journal-level metrics in academic assessment, fueled by the growing use of such metrics in systems of academic evaluation of researchers and research programs. Here we showed that gauging the impact and/or quality of single research articles published in Public Health journals based on a seven-year citation history at a time when scholarly dissemination occurs so rapidly, is equally problematic. Public Health research has been shown to have policy and population health impact many years prior to an article’s JIF reported citation years after research dissemination via publication. Using an absolute citation count is also not useful as it does not take into account the time since an article was published and/or the citation rates of the article relative to the rates at which other articles in the same field are being cited. Findings from this analysis have relevance for any other research fields that are seeking to improve the population health impact of their research articles. To our knowledge, there has been no investigation of influencing the citation impact and/or relative value of research to the population health as explored in Public Health to using specific article-level interventions, greatly enhancing the broad biomedical literature on assessing research value and mechanisms for reducing research waste.

4. Implications for Health Research

The development and application of public health research in health systems have been considerably influenced by changes and demands in the health sector. Public health research was traditionally descriptive and anecdotal, to monitor and control endemic health problems in populations, leading to community interventions. This is a relatively simple process while health services and academic institutions essentially followed diffusion of innovations model, assuming new technologies and knowledge filtered down from research institutions to the community through a series of changes to health programs and policies. As health systems and the problems faced by the populations they serve became increasingly complex, the research methods evolved and public health infrastructures began to demand research which was more analytical and explanatory, to better understand not only what was happening to a population but why. Today, research is required to integrate with health policy and program changes and provide means for which the effects of these changes can be monitored. Despite the fact that expectations are high, there has been little investigation on whether or how public health research actually affects changes to public health policies and programs and how the relationship between research and policy can be improved to better serve the community.

5. Conclusion

War and terrorism have a global impact on various nations. As a response to September 11th, for example, the Global Fund for TB, AIDS, and Malaria was established to provide support in war-torn countries. This is an effort to control and eradicate global diseases. Measures have been taken to prevent bioterrorism attacks through preparedness and advanced technology. The article also discusses the global conditions and worldwide resources that would be needed to ensure good health. It highlights Stockwell’s global assertion that the world community is far from having the knowledge, will, and effective resources to accomplish the improvement of health, which needs to change. The modern public health also has a greater concern for the environment and its effects on health. It is still facing problems of health disparities and inequalities among populations.

The public health field has seen many changes during the 20th century, with the advent of the new public health. There are many challenges that the modern public health, not only in America but also all over the world, encounters. This article on The New Public Health discusses how public health has changed over time. Special attention has been given to the events of September 11th, the anthrax threats, and the effect of war on terrorism. It talks about these events and how they have emphasized the importance of preparedness for public health professionals who face new challenges in both man-made and natural disasters. They fight at home and abroad, risking their own lives to ensure the safety of the general public.