Impact of JAT publications 1981-2003: the most prolific authors and the most highly cited articles.

The Journal of Analytical Toxicology (JAT) recently celebrated its 25th anniversary as an international periodical devoted to publishing scholarly articles in the field of analytical and forensic toxicology. Over the years many important papers spanning the entire field of chemical toxicology have appeared in JAT. One way to assess the usefulness of these papers is by looking at the number of times they subsequently become cited in the reference lists of papers published in other peer-reviewed journals including JAT itself (self-citations). The Thomson Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, has produced a citation database containing all JAT articles published between 1981 through 2003 (N = 2254). This database was used to gather information about the most prolific authors of articles appearing in JAT, the most highly cited articles, the inter-relationships between co-authors, and the countries where the work originated. The person listed most frequently as an author was E.J. Cone, who authored or co-authored 69 papers that attracted a total of 1432 citations, giving a citation impact of 20.76. However, the most highly cited article in JAT was a solo-author work from 1981 by M.E. Jolley describing a fluorescence polarization immunoassay for the analysis of therapeutic drugs in plasma, which was cited 184 times. Working and writing in teams can boost the output of scientific articles as exemplified by the Institut de Médecine Légale in Strasbourg with P. Kintz as the driving force. Kintz and his associates produced the most collaborative work published in JAT. Citation analysis is being increasingly used to evaluate the importance of scientific articles and the journals where these works are published (e.g., impact factors). This article has identified JAT's scientific elite as evidenced by the most prolific authors and the most highly cited papers.