Background: Emergency medicine is recognized as a critical wartime specialty within the US military. Military emergency medicine contributes to medical literature in unique ways not seen with our civilian counterparts. The impact of this contribution, especially regarding innovations in military medicine, has not been previously examined. This study evaluates the numbers of citations for emergency medicine manuscripts published by members of the US military.
Methods: Utilizing the Scopus database, we identified published manuscripts from 2000 to 2020 with an emergency medicine author affiliated with a US military treatment facility. We sorted manuscripts on the number of citations in Scopus and categorized each paper as to whether it addressed military unique topics.
Results: We identified 1,718 manuscripts through Scopus, and based on a 10-citation minimum, we further analyzed 508 manuscripts. After verification of military affiliation, we included 421 manuscripts. The mean number of citations per manuscript was 31.7 ± 40.5; the Mean Cite Score was 4.75 ± 6.17 with a Field Weighted Citation Index (FWCI) of 2.96 ± 6.25. Citation count of publications has been steadily increasing in recent years with significantly more citations for military relevant publications when compared to non-military relevant publications.
Conclusions: These findings highlight the importance of military emergency medicine scholarly activity which has a history of contributions that address specific medical needs of the warfighter and advance the specialty. Military emergency medicine papers have seen rising numbers of citations in the medical literature, particularly those related to military relevant topics emphasizing combat casualty care and military readiness.
Keywords: citation analysis; emergency medicine; graduate medical education; military medicine; scholarly activity.