The Top 20 Most Prolific Authors in the American Journal of Neuroradiology: What Is Their Impact?

Many articles that are relevant to patient care but published in radiology journals may escape notice by clinicians. We sought to determine how often the 20 most prolific American Journal of Neuroradiology (AJNR) authors from 2013 to 2017 published in clinical journals and the extent to which their articles were disseminated into the clinical literature.

We counted all authors' first- or senior-authored articles in the AJNR from 2013 to 2017 to identify the 20 most prolific authors in AJNR. We searched for these 20 authors' total articles from 2013 to 2017 to determine which were published in radiology or clinical journals and the number of citations received from radiology and clinical journals. Authors were sorted into quartiles according to these metrics, and other descriptive statistics were performed.

The top 20 AJNR authors contributed to 1463 articles during 5 years, including 711 (48.6%) in radiology and 752 (51.4%) in clinical journals. These articles were cited 15,857 times, including 4659 (29.3%) by articles in radiology journals. The more prolific authors published in clinical journals more often (Spearman ρ = 0.65, P = .002) and were cited more (ρ = 0.42, P = .07). Articles published in clinical journals were cited more often (mean, 12.3 clinical, 9.3 radiology general versus 8.7 in AJNR), and whether published in radiology or clinical journals, they were cited more frequently by clinical journals.

Regardless of where it is published, radiology research is disseminating into the clinical realm. Radiology articles published in clinical journals are cited more often than those published in radiology journals.