Citation trends of applied journals in behavioral psychology 1981-2000.

Carr et al. (2003) counted how often applied behavior-analysis journals were cited.

They looked at every year from 1981 through 2000.

The goal was to see if our field’s research impact was rising, falling, or flat.

Citation counts stayed steady across the twenty-year window.

There was only a small upward trend, not a big surge.

In short, the journals kept the same academic footprint.

De Los Reyes et al. (2009) later pooled studies from 1970-2007, a span that includes the same journals.

Their meta-analysis used the RPC Model to spot which informant-measure pairs really work.

Together the two papers show that steady journal impact still hides big differences in what actually helps clients.

Pastrana et al. (2018) asked top BCBA programs which articles they teach; their list overlaps with the most-cited works E et al. counted, confirming that citation counts do reach the classroom.

You can trust that classic ABA journals remain a safe source for evidence.

When you pick readings for staff training or parent handouts, start with papers that sit in the long-term citation core—those titles appear in both the citation record and the best syllabi.