We wanted to analyze the citation trend and to find a way to improve the impact factor (IF) of the Journal of the Korean Radiological Society (JKRS).

The number of articles and references, the total citations and self-citations, the IF and the IF excluding self-citations (ZIF) were described by an analysis of Korean Medical Citation Index (KoMCI) during 2000-2005. The total and self citations of the JKRS were compared to that of the Top 5 journals.

There was a 57% decrease of papers for 6 years. The Korean references/paper ranged from 0.98-0.85. The number of total citations received steadily decreased from 394 in 2000 to 180 in 2005. The IF (ZIF) of the JKRS has been gradually lowered from 0.142 (0.049) in 2000 to 0.063 (0.059) in 2005. Although the total citations that cited all papers published/the annual number of papers was 55% of that of the top 5 journals, the total citations citing papers published within the recent two years was only 24% of that of the top 5 journals.

The citation status of the JKRS hassteadily decreased for the recent 6 years, and the IF of the JKRS was very low among all the Korean medical journals. To improve the IF, active advertising for the journal members of the importance of the IF is needed to encourage citing JKRS papers that have been published within the recent two years.