A brief history of injury and accident prevention publications

A search of the Web of Science using “injury prevention” OR “accident prevention” as my search terms turned up what may be the first such paper to be published in the peer reviewed literature. This paper, entitled “Accident prevention” appeared in the American Journal of Public Health in 1946.1 Although a few other papers followed over the next few years, figure 1 clearly shows that it was only in the 1990s that the field really took off. By the end of this decade, the number of publications may well reach 2000.

Being first—or at least quick off the mark—has great merit, but in today’s world it carries much less weight than how often an author is cited. Thus, with the help of Eugene Garfield’s latest creation, Histcite, …