Statistics in Medicine: citations of papers in the first ten years.

All papers from Volume 1 of Statistics in Medicine were followed up in the Science Citation Index. There were 6.7 citations per paper in medical journals as opposed to 1.5 citations per paper in statistical journals, and overall there were 8.7 citations per paper. The average citation rate was lower than that of the first issue of Biometrics, published in the same year, but this was partly because of a greater proportion of zero-cited papers. Citations from medical journals increased annually, until about 5 years after publication, after which they remained steady. Volumes 2-6 of Statistics in Medicine and Volumes 29-33 of Biometrics, for the years 1983-87, were followed up for statistical/medical source of the citations. Citations for Volumes 2-4 of Statistics in Medicine were relatively low, but picked up by Volume 5. Biometrics had more citations from statistical sources than from medical, by contrast to Statistics in Medicine which had far more citations from medical sources than from statistical.