Another brick in the wall (of knowledge)
As we pass the 1500 citations milestone (see https://arc-nwc.nihr.ac.uk/resources/publications/), I thought it would be nice to reflect on this a little and what it actually means.
First up, what do we mean by citations? We bang on about citations in academia a lot, likely more than we should, but what does it actually mean for us to say that ARC NWC has 1500 citations? To answer this, we need to look at an academic journal article, so let’s pick one from 2020 with some familiar ARC NWC names in it –
Has the introduction of direct oral anticoagulants (DOACs) in England increased emergency admissions for bleeding conditions? A longitudinal ecological study
Ana Alfirevic, Jennifer Downing, Konstantinos Daras, Terence Comerford, Munir Pirmohamed, Ben Barr
This article looked at the impact of a change in guidance by the National Insititute for Health and Care Excellence for a particular type of medication (direct oral anticoagulants).
To do this work the authors had to refer to (cite) other published journal articles on the subject to explain the background of their work and to help interpret the results. This is a fundamental part of modern research – we are a community, each adding a brick to the wall of knowledge, building on top of what has been done before, and enabling more to be built on our work. So, when we cite another journal article, we are often saying “Here’s a statement I am making, and here’s a link to an article which backs it up”.
Our first 1500 citations then mean that at least 1500 journal articles have relied on the work we have done in the ARC NWC to carry out their research. Or, to put that another way, not only have we generated enough new knowledge to fill 240 journal articles, but we have also helped a further 1500 articles be written. That’s a lot of extra research. It would take a long time to read all 1500 journal articles, so I’ve generated a word cloud of the abstract text of all those journal articles which cite us to help give an indication of how the wider community is building on the foundations we have laid.
Dr Olly Butters, Care and Health Informatics.
