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The Structure of Medical Informatics Journal Literature
Journal article   Open access

The Structure of Medical Informatics Journal Literature

Theodore A. Morris and Katherine W. McCain
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, v 5(5), pp 448-466
01 Jan 1998
PMID: 9760393
url
https://doi.org/10.1136/jamia.1998.0050448View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Maybe Open Access (Publisher Bronze) Open

Abstract

Original Investigations
Abstract Objective: Medical informatics is an emergent interdisciplinary field described as drawing upon and contributing to both the health sciences and information sciences. The authors elucidate the disciplinary nature and internal structure of the field. Design: To better understand the field's disciplinary nature, the authors examine the intercitation relationships of its journal literature. To determine its internal structure, they examined its journal cocitation patterns. Measurements: The authors used data from the Science Citation Index (SCI) and Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) to perform intercitation studies among productive journal titles, and software routines from SPSS to perform multivariate data analyses on cocitation data for proposed core journals. Results: Intercitation network analysis suggests that a core literature exists, one mark of a separate discipline. Multivariate analyses of cocitation data suggest that major focus areas within the field include biomedical engineering, biomedical computing, decision support, and education. The interpretable dimensions of multidimensional scaling maps differed for the SCI and SSCI data sets. Strong links to information science literature were not found. Conclusion: The authors saw indications of a core literature and of several major research fronts. The field appears to be viewed differently by authors writing in journals indexed by SCI from those writing in journals indexed by SSCI, with more emphasis placed on computers and engineering versus decision making by the former and more emphasis on theory versus application (clinical practice) by the latter.

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Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:

Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Computer Science, Information Systems
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Health Care Sciences & Services
Information Science & Library Science
Medical Informatics
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