Impact of Canadian Primary Health Care Research and Researchers: A Citation Analysis
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Context: As the place of first-contact and lifelong care, it is critically important to support primary health care (PHC) research. Although Canada is home to internationally recognized PHC researchers, little is known about their scholarly productivity and research impact. Objective: This study analyzes and describes the research publication impact of PHC researchers in Canada. Specifically, we identify: a) the 30 most-cited Canadian PHC researchers; b) characteristics of these researchers; and (c) the most-cited peer-reviewed publications. Study Design and Analysis: First-author citations identified the 30 most-cited researchers. For each researcher, data were analyzed on the number of publications and citations, research themes, and H-index. Data were collected on content, journal impact factor, and field weighted citation impact for publications with over 500 citations. The association between the number of first-author publications/citations and researchers’ characteristics was determined using point-serial correlation and Pearson correlation coefficients. Dataset: Scopus database and targeted internet searches in March 2021. Population Studied: Canadian PHC researchers. Intervention/Instrument: A sequential nomination process identified 266 Canadian PHC researchers. Outcome Measures: Number of publications and citations, research themes, and H-index. Results: The 30 most cited PHC researchers produced on average 46 first-author publications and were cited 2077 times over an average of 29 years. Nineteen publications were cited more than 500 times. Over half of PHC researchers were men (63%). The majority (n=11) reside in Ontario, followed by Quebec (n=7), British Columbia (n=4) and Alberta (n=2). Most were clinician scientists with an academic appointment in Family Medicine (93%) and affiliated with five universities (83%). Duration of career was moderately associated with the number of first-author publications (0.44; P=0.02) and citations (0.4; P=0.03). The research topics covered are diverse, focusing on professional education, clinician behaviour change, and patient relationships. Eleven publications reported the results of systematic reviews, and two other publications were also reviews. Conclusions: Canadian PHC researchers are widely cited in the international medical literature. Further investments in PHC research could expedite and better inform decisions on meaningful primary health care transformation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.022 | 0.158 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.097 | 0.199 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.015 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".