It has been suggested that bibliometric analysis of different document types
may reveal new aspects of research performance. In medical research a number of
study types play different roles in the research process and it has been shown,
that the evidence-level of study types is associated with varying citation
rates. This study focuses on clinical practice guidelines, which are supposed
to gather the highest evidence on a given topic to give the best possible
recommendation for practitioners. The quality of clinical practice guidelines,
measured using the AGREE score, is compared to the citations given to the
references used in these guidelines, as it is hypothesised, that better
guidelines are based on higher cited references. AGREE scores are gathered from
reviews of clinical practice guidelines on a number of diseases and treatments.
Their references are collected from Web of Science and citation counts are
normalised using the item-oriented z-score and the PPtop-10% indicators. A
positive correlation between both citation indicators and the AGREE score of
clinical practice guidelines is found. Some potential confounding factors are
identified. While confounding cannot be excluded, results indicate low
likelihood for the identified confounders. The results provide a new
perspective to and application of citation analysis.Comment: Paper submitted to 14th International Society of Scientometrics and
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