Snowballing citations

Helen Handoll; Gregory Atkinson

doi:10.1136/bmj.h6309

Snowballing citations

Helen Handoll, Gregory Atkinson

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Abstract

In August 2015, one of us (HHGH) received an unsolicited email from the publishing company Elsevier announcing a citation of her short letter published in 2006.1 The letter had attempted to correct a considerable overestimate of the number of Cochrane reviews on rehabilitation interventions (figure⇓).1 Intrigued, she investigated further and found that, as of August 2015, this modest letter had had 62 citations, all of which related to meta-analyses of genetic risk factors. The first of these meta-analyses was published in 2009 and all the lead authors were based in China. Consistently, authors referenced the letter to support their use of the Cochran Q-statistic for exploring heterogeneity of effect sizes, rather than to highlight the need for Cochrane reviews on rehabilitation.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	-
Journal	BMJ
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.h6309
Publication status	Published - 14 Dec 2015

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Snowballing citations

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