Exploring Public Health Citation Networks: A Pilot Project to Determine the Publishing Patterns in Racial and Ethnic Health Disparity Research

Abstract

Objective: The study identifies the most heavily cited journal titles, publication types, and subject disciplines in racial and ethnic health disparities research. The overall goal is to assist librarians with collection assessment for diversity and disparity-related research, and to provide a resource to assist faculty with identifying potential sources for publication. Methods: Using a modified version of the literature mapping protocol developed by the Nursing and Allied Health Resources Section, this study analyzed the references from research articles published in 2016 in racial and ethnic health disparities journals. Four journals were selected based on coverage of racial and ethnic disparities, and input from health disparities researchers. For eachreference, publication type, publication date, and journal title, if it is an article, was recorded. To identify the core journals, cited journals were divided into three zones using Bradford’s Law of Scattering. A single subject discipline was assigned to each core journal based on Library of Congress classification, as determined by Ulrich’s Web. Results: 332 articles from four journals yielded 13,023 references. Journal articles were the most heavily cited publication type (n=10,596, 81%), followed bygovernment reports (n=1005, 8%). Age of citations ranged 163 years, with 41% (n=5339) of citations occurring within the previous 8 years. The peak age of citations for articles was 6 years. Forty-two core journals accounted for 33.8% of all citations. Themost common subject disciplines of these core journals were medicine (n=15), and public health and population health (n=15), followed by ethnic interests (n=4). Conclusion: Similar to other public health-related fields, racial and ethnic health disparity research draws from a very diverse pool of subject disciplines from medicine to public health to the social sciences, and relies on older articles and reports published within the last twenty years. However, racial and ethnic disparity research does not rely as heavily on government reports or miscellaneous items as other public health and social services disciplines.