Characterizing core journals in ophthalmology literature using Bradford’s law: a bibliometric analysis

Purpose: The exponential growth of ophthalmology research can be challenging to keep up with for trainees, researchers and clinicians and little has been done to identify core ophthalmology journals. We thus applied Bradford’s law to characterize core journals in ophthalmology. Design: Cross-sectional bibliometric analysis Methods: Two sets of top 10 National Library of Medicine indexed ophthalmology journals based on h-index and impact factor (IF) were combined to create top 14 journals used for analysis. The references from all articles published in these journals in one randomized quarter were compiled into a citation database. Bradford’s law was applied to identify zonal distribution of journals. Results: A total of 3093 journals containing 34633 articles were cited in ophthalmology literature from July-Sept 2022. Under linear regression, IF was significantly associated with h-index for the top 20 journals (P2=0.996), validating Bradford’s law. Conclusions: Six core ophthalmology journals were identified: American Journal of Ophthalmology, Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, Ophthalmology, JAMA Ophthalmology, British Journal of Ophthalmology, Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery. These highly cited core journals may serve as high-yield resources for describing the latest advances in ophthalmology research and may guide ophthalmology trainees and educators with their learning and teaching.