This study assessed citation skew across the top 10 sleep science journals, analyzing citations received in 2022 for 3,949 original and review articles published in 2020–2021, and evaluated how well the Journal Impact Factor (JIF) predicts individual article citation rates.
Citation distribution was highly skewed: 16.0% of articles received zero citations and 18.7% received only one; just 12.5% of articles accounted for 50% of all 16,373 citations. Only 27.7% of articles exceeded their journal's JIF. JIF correlated weakly with article-level citations (r = 0.21), explaining only ~4.4% of the variance.
- Only one JIF cycle (2022 citations for 2020–2021 articles) was analyzed, limiting temporal generalizability. - Self-citations and citation-network effects were not accounted for. - Study covers sleep medicine journals only, so findings may not generalize to other fields.
When evaluating research impact—such as for hiring, promotion, or grant decisions—JIF is a poor proxy for individual article influence. Prioritize article-level metrics and qualitative appraisal over journal-level indicators.
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