Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Highlights in this Issue

Highlights in this Issue Search engines have a growing role in identifying articles of interest in the scholarly literature. Some searchers may look no further than the title of an article and this is why we now emphasise the need for informative titles that tell us what the results of a study are and the research method used. In her editorial on ‘Writing an abstract’, Elizabeth Heseltine's focus is on the next point of access, the research abstract, including the title. An abstract is much more likely to be read online than the full article and Heseltine warns that it may well be the only part of your article that is read. The abstract has to give a clear and accurate account of a study to lure the reader into downloading and reading the full article. This is particularly important when access to the full article has to be purchased. ANZJPH is committed to publishing studies that will lead to better ways of addressing health inequity. Of particular importance is research on Indigenous health in Australia, New Zealand and internationally. The bibliometric analysis of Indigenous health research in Australia by Gemma Derrick and colleagues shows that there has been a pleasing growth in publications addressing Indigenous health. Between 1972 and 2008, research referring to Indigenous health rose by 14.1% in comparison with an annual growth rate in Australian publications of 8.2%. There are some downsides to this figure. The total number of articles identified in their Web of Science search is small (820). Almost a quarter of the research focused on Indigenous health only as part of a larger population‐based study. Descriptive studies dominated. More importantly, the increase in publications was not matched by an increase in citations. The experience of ANZJPH is similar. Four of our top five online article downloads in the last 12 months directly address Indigenous health, with most the attention going to an article on reducing racism in health care settings. One of these articles is a highly cited paper from 2007 but this paper is the exception to the rule – citations seldom follow downloads. We encourage readers to systematically review the existing literature on Indigenous health and then cite articles appropriately in their submissions. We draw your attention to the article by Hassan Vally et al. on the use of Geographic Information Systems in plotting the risk of Ross River Virus infection. Their data come from exceptionally good documentation of an outbreak of the disease in 1995–96 in an area surrounding the Leschenault estuary in south‐west Western Australia. The GIS allows a much more refined and detailed analysis of an outbreak to show the various points, where the source of infection was centred in a complex ecosystem including the urban area of Bunbury, several river systems and the use of the estuary for tourism. Such an analysis can clarify where preventive efforts should be focused. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health Wiley

Highlights in this Issue

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health , Volume 36 (3) – Jun 1, 2012

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/highlights-in-this-issue-049xycdYv1

References (4)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 2012 The Authors. ANZJPH © 2012 Public Health Association of Australia
ISSN
1326-0200
eISSN
1753-6405
DOI
10.1111/j.1753-6405.2012.00863.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Search engines have a growing role in identifying articles of interest in the scholarly literature. Some searchers may look no further than the title of an article and this is why we now emphasise the need for informative titles that tell us what the results of a study are and the research method used. In her editorial on ‘Writing an abstract’, Elizabeth Heseltine's focus is on the next point of access, the research abstract, including the title. An abstract is much more likely to be read online than the full article and Heseltine warns that it may well be the only part of your article that is read. The abstract has to give a clear and accurate account of a study to lure the reader into downloading and reading the full article. This is particularly important when access to the full article has to be purchased. ANZJPH is committed to publishing studies that will lead to better ways of addressing health inequity. Of particular importance is research on Indigenous health in Australia, New Zealand and internationally. The bibliometric analysis of Indigenous health research in Australia by Gemma Derrick and colleagues shows that there has been a pleasing growth in publications addressing Indigenous health. Between 1972 and 2008, research referring to Indigenous health rose by 14.1% in comparison with an annual growth rate in Australian publications of 8.2%. There are some downsides to this figure. The total number of articles identified in their Web of Science search is small (820). Almost a quarter of the research focused on Indigenous health only as part of a larger population‐based study. Descriptive studies dominated. More importantly, the increase in publications was not matched by an increase in citations. The experience of ANZJPH is similar. Four of our top five online article downloads in the last 12 months directly address Indigenous health, with most the attention going to an article on reducing racism in health care settings. One of these articles is a highly cited paper from 2007 but this paper is the exception to the rule – citations seldom follow downloads. We encourage readers to systematically review the existing literature on Indigenous health and then cite articles appropriately in their submissions. We draw your attention to the article by Hassan Vally et al. on the use of Geographic Information Systems in plotting the risk of Ross River Virus infection. Their data come from exceptionally good documentation of an outbreak of the disease in 1995–96 in an area surrounding the Leschenault estuary in south‐west Western Australia. The GIS allows a much more refined and detailed analysis of an outbreak to show the various points, where the source of infection was centred in a complex ecosystem including the urban area of Bunbury, several river systems and the use of the estuary for tourism. Such an analysis can clarify where preventive efforts should be focused.

Journal

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public HealthWiley

Published: Jun 1, 2012

There are no references for this article.