[Citation characteristics of German authors in "Der Chirurg": hegemony of the impact factor].

Characteristics of citation and language in publications of German authors from the journal "Der Chirurg" (vol 78, 2007) were analysed. Out of a total of 3,342 citations, 756 (22.62%) were from German authors with 248 (32.8) self-citations. The hegemony of the impact factor in science, research and education is critically discussed. The imbalance between the number of surgeons in the US and United Kingdom (66,032) and surgeons in the German speaking countries in Europe (25,300) is compared with respect to the counting methods used to create the impact factor of a journal. The creation of an independent impact factor in Europe and the development of an EU-based citation data bank which allows unselected access to national language scientific literature are strongly needed.