The History of Optometry Journals from a Bibliometric Perspective

The rich history of optometric journal publications has been well documented, but the scientific impact of all optometry journals over all time has not been published. This work aims to determine the most impactful papers, authors, institutions and countries publishing in optometry journals. A h-index for “optometry journal publications” (the “hOJP-index”) was derived for each constituent of each category to serve as a measure of impact. The hOJP-index for the 34,565 papers published in all optometry journals is 136; these papers have been cited 294,239 times. Optometry and Vision Science is the most impactful and prolific journal (hOJP=118; n=13,095 papers). The most highly cited paper, by Richard Armstrong, is entitled “When to use the Bonferroni correction” (1,172 citations). Australian optometrist Nathan Efron is the most impactful and prolific author (hOJP=41; n=273). UNSW Sydney and the University of California, Berkeley are the most impactful institutions (both hOJP=58), and UNSW Sydney is the most prolific (n=963). The most impactful and prolific nation is the United States (hOJP=109; n=12,050). This quantitative bibliometric analysis demonstrates an impactful optometric research base enshrined in optometry journals.