LAUSR

Recently, Meyerholz and Flaherty discussed the possible importance of the impact factor (IF) and citation index data (Web of Science) for Veterinary Pathology. Their discussion is well-timed as the question of the value of IF is under open debate in the research community. Clarivate Analytics produces The Web of Science (https:// clarivate.com/products/web-of-science/) and Journal Citation Reports. In research, the various fields/disciplines of research are ranked, compared with their peers, according to Journal Citation Reports. Veterinary Pathology does well in the categories for pathology journals and veterinary sciences journals, being ranked 13th of 136 journals in veterinary science and 49th of 212 pathology journals. There are many differences between medical and veterinary research (and other specialized disciplines) that contribute to modest IF rankings of specialized journals such as Veterinary Pathology. The size of the research community in each discipline affects their “footprint” in translational research. For instance, articles published in so-called high-impact journals (SCHU) are of importance to a much larger community of medical researchers than are the relatively small fields such as our own. Individual physicians involved in human medicine (900 000þ), researchers in medical pathology (18 000þ), and PhDs in various fields (more than 2 million) greatly outnumber those in veterinary medicine (90 000þ) and veterinary pathology (2000þ) (data from various sources). Journals that specialize in basic medical research usually are a source of publications often by scientists with PhD or MD degrees but often not with a DVM degree. In contrast, veterinary journals are leaders in publishing research that concerns veterinary medicine including domestic animals, wildlife, and laboratory animals. The veterinary community is often interested in natural diseases of animals, but the funding resources for this research are limited, and most funding is heavily skewed toward studies modeling human disease. Studies involving animal models of human disease often aim for publication in SCHIJ (ie, journals with the most highly cited research publications) and can be the basis of highly cited papers. In contrast, veterinary research publications in SCHIJ journals often have much lower citation levels than those for publications involving basic and translational biomedical research—even for diseases of comparative “One Health” interest (Tables 1–4). Table 1 shows the journal IFs and numbers of citations for top-cited articles published in SCHIJ and in leading pathology journals. These differences in citations might, in part, be due to the numbers of scientists in a field of research who publish and read those publications. Comparisons between veterinary (Table 2) and medical (Table 3) infectious disease discoveries show that initial publications of new human infectious agents often have a much higher number of citations than do those initial reports of comparable veterinary diseases. The leading articles published in Veterinary Pathology have much lower numbers of citations (Table 4) than other journals