The Bibliometric Characteristics of Chinese Medical Core Journals

To provide bibliometric evidence for Chinese medical journals to be considered for the evaluation system of core journals, the authors have undertaken a comparative study on bibliometric characteristics between Chinese core journals and common journals (journals not included in A Guide to the Core Journals of China). There are 203 Chinese medical core journals and 440 Chinese common journals. Impact factor, ratio of articles supported with funding sources (foundation), total yearly pages and average article length of core journals are significantly higher than those of common journals in China. Medical editors can take effective measures to improve academic levels and journal impact by considering factors from this study, such as having a proper and short publication cycle, increasing the impact factor, concentrating on articles with foundation support, publishing more high-impact papers, increasing substantive content and publishing more articles with abstracts.