OBJECTIVETo study the information absorbency of Chinese Journal of Preventive Medicine and its half-citing life, to find out the core journals and characteristics of literature requested by scientists, and to analyze the trend of preventive medicine research.

METHODSThe citation analysis was used to analyze the references cited in 766 articles in Chinese Journal of Preventive Medicine from 2001-2004.

RESULTS505 (65.93%) of 766 articles have the 4 708 references, and the self-citation rate was 3.97%. The average number of references per paper was 6.15, and the maximum of references in one paper was 39. Main types of citations were from journals (87.43%) and the books (9.98%). The Price Index was 45.20%, and the self-citation rate was 3.97%. The percent of citations from the high-ranked 22 journals were 26.51%.

CONCLUSIONSThe publications in Chinese Journal of Preventive Medicine have received more concerns than those from other major journals in medicine. Periodical and English literature were mostly used by the preventive researcher. Moreover, the articles published in the journal were able to keep closely along with the advances of the subject research.