Evaluating "payback" on biomedical research from papers cited in clinical guidelines: applied bibliometric study.

OBJECTIVES To develop a methodology for evaluating the impact of research on health care, and to characterise the papers cited on clinical guidelines. DESIGN The bibliographic details of the papers cited in 15 clinical guidelines, developed in and for the United Kingdom, were collated and analysed with applied bibliometric techniques. RESULTS The median age of papers cited in clinical guidelines was eight years; most papers were published by authors living in either the United States (36%) or the United Kingdom (25%)-this is two and a half times more than expected as about 10% of all biomedical outputs are published in the United Kingdom; and clinical guidelines do not cite basic research papers. CONCLUSION Analysis of the evidence base of clinical guidelines may be one way of tracking the flow of knowledge from the laboratory to the clinic. Moreover, such analysis provides a useful, clinically relevant method for evaluating research outcomes and different strategies in research and development.