Who cites optometry journals?

Purpose: This work seeks to identify the most impactful journals, papers, authors, institutions, and countries that cite optometry journal articles. Methods: The Scopus database was searched for papers citing at least one article published in any of the 18 optometry journals included in that database (i.e. ‘optometry articles’). The 10 most highly cited papers that cite optometry journal articles were determined from 82,830 papers found. A h-index for “optometry journal citations” (the h_OJC-index) was derived for each entity in the categories of journals, papers, authors, institutions and countries to serve as a measure of impact. Results: The h_OJC-index of the body of papers citing optometry journal articles is 370. Papers citing optometry journal articles have themselves been cited 2,054,816 times. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (h_OJC = 154) is the most impactful journal citing optometry articles and Optometry and Vision Science the most prolific (5310 papers). The most impactful paper citing optometry journal articles (5725 citations) was published in Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. Ophthalmologist Seang Mei Saw (h_OJC = 69) is the most impactful author and optometrist Nathan Efron is the most prolific (288 papers). Harvard University (h_OJC = 127) is the most impactful and UNSW Sydney is the most prolific institution (1761 papers). The United States is the most impactful and prolific nation (h_OJC = 313; 28,485 papers). Conclusions: Optometry journal articles are cited extensively by optometrists, ophthalmologists, and vision scientists world-wide, as well as authors from a broad spectrum of non-ophthalmic research domains. This work confirms the utility and influence of optometry journals.