bims-evares Biomed News
on Evaluation of research
Issue of 2019–03–10
nine papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society
  1. Co-occurrence simplicial complexes in mathematics: identifying the holes of knowledge.
  2. Identifying translational science through embeddings of controlled vocabularies.
  3. Global Disparities Between Pediatric Publications and Disease Burden From 2006 to 2015.
  4. A literature analysis on anti-vascular endothelial growth factor therapy (anti-VEGF) using a bibliometric approach.
  5. Self-citations in musculoskeletal radiology: frequency and pattern analysis.
  6. Reporting guidelines for health research: protocol for a cross-sectional analysis of the EQUATOR Network Library.
  7. Contribution of Moroccan neurosurgeons to the World neurosurgical literature in PubMed. A bibliometric evaluation over times.
  8. A Scientometric Analysis of the 50 Most Cited Articles for Reconstruction of the Lower Extremity.
  9. The top 10 most-cited articles on the management of fractured instruments: a bibliometric analysis.
  1. Appl Netw Sci. 2018 ;3(1): 37
    Co-occurrence simplicial complexes in mathematics: identifying the holes of knowledge.
    Vsevolod Salnikov, Daniele Cassese, Renaud Lambiotte, Nick S Jones.
      In the last years complex networks tools contributed to provide insights on the structure of research, through the study of collaboration, citation and co-occurrence networks. The network approach focuses on pairwise relationships, often compressing multidimensional data structures and inevitably losing information. In this paper we propose for the first time a simplicial complex approach to word co-occurrences, providing a natural framework for the study of higher-order relations in the space of scientific knowledge. Using topological methods we explore the conceptual landscape of mathematical research, focusing on homological holes, regions with low connectivity in the simplicial structure. We find that homological holes are ubiquitous, which suggests that they capture some essential feature of research practice in mathematics. k-dimensional holes die when every concept in the hole appears in an article together with other k+1 concepts in the hole, hence their death may be a sign of the creation of new knowledge, as we show with some examples. We find a positive relation between the size of a hole and the time it takes to be closed: larger holes may represent potential for important advances in the field because they separate conceptually distant areas. We provide further description of the conceptual space by looking for the simplicial analogs of stars and explore the likelihood of edges in a star to be also part of a homological cycle. We also show that authors' conceptual entropy is positively related with their contribution to homological holes, suggesting that polymaths tend to be on the frontier of research.
    Keywords:  Co-occurrence; Persistent homology; Topological data analysis
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s41109-018-0074-3
  2. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2019 Mar 01. pii: ocy177. [Epub ahead of print]
    Identifying translational science through embeddings of controlled vocabularies.
    Qing Ke.
       OBJECTIVE: Translational science aims at "translating" basic scientific discoveries into clinical applications. The identification of translational science has practicality such as evaluating the effectiveness of investments made into large programs like the Clinical and Translational Science Awards. Despite several proposed methods that group publications-the primary unit of research output-into some categories, we still lack a quantitative way to place articles onto the full, continuous spectrum from basic research to clinical medicine.
    MATERIALS AND METHODS: I learn vector representations of controlled vocabularies assigned to Medline articles to obtain a translational axis that points from basic science to clinical medicine. The projected position of a term on the translational axis, expressed by a continuous quantity, indicates the term's "appliedness." The position of an article, determined by the average location over its terms, quantifies the degree of its appliedness, which I term the level score.
    RESULTS: I validate the present method by comparing with previous techniques, showing excellent agreement yet uncovering significant variations of scores of articles in previously defined categories. The measure allows us to characterize the standing of journals, disciplines, and the entire biomedical literature along the basic-applied spectrum. Analysis on large-scale citation network reveals 2 main findings. First, direct citations mainly occurred between articles with similar scores. Second, shortest paths are more likely ended up with an article closer to the basic end of the spectrum, regardless of where the starting article is on the spectrum.
    CONCLUSIONS: The proposed method provides a quantitative way to identify translational science.
    Keywords:  Medical Subject Heading; citation analysis; science of science; translational science
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocy177
  3. Glob Pediatr Health. 2019 ;6 2333794X19831298
    Global Disparities Between Pediatric Publications and Disease Burden From 2006 to 2015.
    Elizabeth M Keating, Heather Haq, Chris A Rees, Kirk A Dearden, Samuel A Luboga, Gordon E Schutze, Peter N Kazembe.
      There is a disproportionate burden of pediatric disease in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs); however, the proportion and relation of published articles to childhood disease burden in LMICs have not been assessed previously. This study aimed to determine whether published articles and disease topics from research conducted in LMICs in the most widely cited pediatric journals reflected the global burden of childhood disease. We reviewed all articles published from 2006 to 2015 in the 3 pediatric journals with the highest Eigenfactor scores to identify studies conducted in the World Bank-designated LMICs. We abstracted study topic, design, purpose, country, and funding sources. We derived descriptive statistics, Fisher's exact χ2 test, Monte Carlo estimates, and Spearman's rank order coefficients. Of the 19 676 articles reviewed, 10 494 were original research articles. Of those, 965 (9.2%) were conducted in LMICs. Over the study period, the proportion of published articles originating from LMICs increased (r 2 = 0.77). Disease topics did not reflect the underlying burden of disease as measured in disability-adjusted life years (Spearman's rank order coefficient = 0.25). Despite bearing the majority of the world's burden of disease, articles from LMICs made up a small proportion of all published articles in the 3 pediatric journals with the highest Eigenfactor scores. The number of published articles from LMICs increased over the study period; nevertheless, the topics did not coincide with the burden of disease in LMICs. These discrepancies highlight the need for development of a research agenda to address the diseases that are the greatest threat to the majority of children worldwide.
    Keywords:  disease burden; general pediatrics; global health; publications; publishing disparity
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/2333794X19831298
  4. Naunyn Schmiedebergs Arch Pharmacol. 2019 Mar 02.
    A literature analysis on anti-vascular endothelial growth factor therapy (anti-VEGF) using a bibliometric approach.
    Andy Wai Kan Yeung, Mohamed M Abdel-Daim, Abdelrahman Ibrahim Abushouk, Kazuaki Kadonosono.
      We performed the current study to assess the citation performance of research works on anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) therapy. We searched Web of Science (WoS) to identify relevant publications and analyze them with reference to their publication year, journal title, citation count, WoS category, and article type. The bibliometric software (VOSviewer) was used for citation analyses of countries and journals and to generate a term map that visualizes the recurring terms appearing in the titles and abstracts of published articles. The literature search resulted in 7364 articles, with a mean citation count of 26.2. Over half of them (50.2%) were published during the past 5 years. Original articles constituted the majority (67.8%). The publications were mainly classified into WoS categories of ophthalmology (43.2%) and oncology (20.6%). The most prolific ophthalmology and cancer journals were Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science (7.3%) and Cancer Research (1.4%), respectively. The correlation between journal impact factor and citation count was weak to moderate (for journals with impact factor up to 5 and 10, respectively), and open-access articles had significantly more citations than non-open-access articles (p < 0.001). The frequently targeted tumors by anti-VEGF therapy included metastatic colorectal cancer (196; 49.2 citations per article (CPA)), breast cancers (167; 37.2 CPA), and renal cell carcinoma (122; 38.2 CPA). The frequently targeted eye pathologies were age-related macular degeneration (828; 18.2 CPA), diabetic macular edema (466; 10.8 CPA), and diabetic retinopathy (358; 31.9 CPA). These results indicate that anti-VEGF therapy has a wide range of applications and its publications are highly cited.
    Keywords:  Anti-VEGF; Bibliometric; Cancer; Macular edema; Web of Science
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s00210-019-01629-y
  5. Acta Radiol. 2019 Mar 07. 284185119836215
    Self-citations in musculoskeletal radiology: frequency and pattern analysis.
    Riham Dessouky, Lihua Zhang, Vibhor Wadhwa, Yin Xi, Avneesh Chhabra.
       BACKGROUND: Author self-citation can affect quantitative aspects of scientific research. However, little is known about its prevalence in radiology literature.
    PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to determine the frequency and factors associated with author self-citation in musculoskeletal radiology.
    MATERIAL AND METHODS: Retrospective review of bibliographic data in musculoskeletal radiology articles of two separate journals over a 23-month period (January 2015 to November 2016) was performed to determine frequency of author self-citations. Other data included article type, topic, title length, author order, affiliation, and geographic location.
    RESULTS: One-third of all included articles had author self-citations with a mean and median of 2.8 and 2 citations per article. Case reports contained up to 52.4% self-citations (mean = 11.2%, 95% CI = 5.9-16.5). Larger frequencies of self-citations were found among first and second authors and university-affiliated authors. The United States was the most frequent country to produce publications but did not have the highest percentage of self-citations.
    CONCLUSION: Self-citations in musculoskeletal radiology is no different than other medical fields. It does not currently seem to pose a threat on the integrity of scientific research and is usually needed to expand on previous knowledge. Nevertheless, authors and journals should be aware of implications of abusing such practice on future medical research.
    Keywords:  Self-citation; citation; journal; research
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/0284185119836215
  6. BMJ Open. 2019 Mar 04. 9(3): e022769
    Reporting guidelines for health research: protocol for a cross-sectional analysis of the EQUATOR Network Library.
    Ferrán Catalá-López, Adolfo Alonso-Arroyo, Matthew J Page, Brian Hutton, Manuel Ridao, Rafael Tabarés-Seisdedos, Rafael Aleixandre-Benavent, David Moher.
       INTRODUCTION: Transparency and completeness of health research is highly variable, with important deficiencies in the reporting of methods and results of studies. Reporting guidelines aim to improve transparency and quality of research reports, and are often developed by consortia of journal editors, peer reviewers, authors, consumers and other key stakeholders. The objective of this study will be to investigate the characteristics of scientific collaboration among developers and the citation metrics of reporting guidelines of health research.
    METHODS AND ANALYSIS: This is the study protocol for a cross-sectional analysis of completed reporting guidelines indexed in the Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research Network Library. We will search PubMed/MEDLINE and the Web of Science. Screening, selection and data abstraction will be conducted by one researcher and verified by a second researcher. Potential discrepancies will be resolved via discussion. We will include published papers of reporting guidelines written in English. Published papers will have to meet the definition of a reporting guideline related to health research (eg, a checklist, flow diagram or explicit text), with no restrictions by study design, medical specialty, disease or condition. Raw data from each included paper (including title, publication year, journal, subject category, keywords, citations, and the authors' names, author's affiliated institution and country) will be exported from the Web of Science. Descriptive analyses will be conducted (including the number of papers, citations, authors, countries, journals, keywords and main collaboration metrics). We will identify the most prolific authors, institutions, countries, journals and the most cited papers. Network analyses will be carried out to study the structure of collaborations.
    ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: No ethical approval will be required. Findings from this study will be published in peer-reviewed journals. All data will be deposited in a cross-disciplinary public repository. It is anticipated the study findings could be relevant to a variety of audiences.
    Keywords:  Authorship; Biomedical Research; Network Analysis; Reporting Guidelines; Research Networks; Scientific Collaboration; research reporting
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-022769
  7. World Neurosurg. 2019 Mar 04. pii: S1878-8750(19)30545-5. [Epub ahead of print]
    Contribution of Moroccan neurosurgeons to the World neurosurgical literature in PubMed. A bibliometric evaluation over times.
    Ali Akhaddar.
       BACKGROUND: Medical publications reflect the development of training, research and health services. There is no objective data regarding neurosurgical publications from Morocco. Bibliometrics were used here to evaluate the contribution of Moroccan neurosurgeons (MONS) in neurosurgical journals worldwide and to discuss the strategies that can be applied to increase quantity and quality of publications on this subject.
    METHODS: A literature search of publications by MONS was performed using PubMed database over times. The number and quality of the publication were evaluated with the impact factor (IF) of the neurosurgical journals and the h-index of each first-author.
    RESULTS: A total of 174 articles were identified and analyzed between 1989-2018. MONS continue to publish more every year worldwide. However, their contribution in neurosurgical journals has been gradually declining since 2012. Scientific publishing were limited to some great neurosurgical departments and reserved to few academic neurosurgeons in the country. Most of the papers were case reports, in French language, in non-neurosurgical journals, from mono-centers and without international collaboration.
    CONCLUSION: Academic neurosurgeons in Morocco should prepare their residents and young researchers on research methodology and medical writing. Moroccan neurosurgical research needs to be more focused on modern neurosurgical topics by highlighting our particularities. More high level of evidence studies should be published in English-writing neurosurgical journals with high IF and good scientific reputation. MONS should continue to collaborate more often with each other and with foreign centers to further improve the quality and number of international publications regardless of the difficulties they face.
    Keywords:  Bibliometrics; Medical Publication; Morocco; Neurosurgery; PubMed; Research; Scientific Productivity
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2019.02.122
  8. Surg Res Pract. 2019 ;2019 3068028
    A Scientometric Analysis of the 50 Most Cited Articles for Reconstruction of the Lower Extremity.
    Zacharia Mbaidjol, Jens Rothenberger, Rajesh Chetany.
       Background: Lower extremity reconstruction has always been a challenge. Some of the published articles had a major impact on the field but are often not considered as classics because they have fewer citations. We therefore conducted a scientometric analysis of the most cited articles with a focus solely on the lower limb.
    Methods: A search was conducted on Medline, the Web of Science database, Google Scholar, and Scopus identifying articles relevant to reconstructive surgery of the lower limb. All journals were included with no time frames. Articles relating solely to orthopedics or vascular reconstruction were excluded. The number of citations obtained were then plotted and compared between the different search engines. The mean citation number was calculated by taking into consideration the total number of years since the article's first year of publication. Articles were then ranked and classified according to their authors, their years of publications, and their countries. They were furthermore categorized and analyzed.
    Results: Highly cited articles were easily retrieved with Google Scholar, mostly published in Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery (n = 37) and were mainly authored by American Medical Centers (n = 22). Fifty-four percent (54%) of these classic articles discussed the design of new flaps or were anatomical studies.
    Conclusions: We were not able to find a correlation between the year of citation and the number of citations. The citation pattern of a paper cannot be predicted, but a majority of highly cited article allowed the design of new reconstructive techniques.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/3068028
  9. Restor Dent Endod. 2019 Feb;44(1): e2
    The top 10 most-cited articles on the management of fractured instruments: a bibliometric analysis.
    Lora Mishra, Hyeon-Cheol Kim, Naomi Ranjan Singh, Priti Pragati Rath.
       Objectives: The purpose of this research was to identify the top 10 most-cited articles on the management of fractured or broken instruments and to perform a bibliometric analysis thereof.
    Materials and Methods: Published articles related to fractured instruments were screened from online databases, such as Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and ScienceDirect, and highly cited papers, with at least 50 citations since publication, were identified. The most-cited articles were selected and analysed with regard to publication title, authorship, the journal of publication, year, institution, country of origin, article type, and number of citations.
    Results: The top 10 most-cited articles were from various journals. Most were published in the Journal of Endodontics, followed by the International Endodontic Journal, and Dental Traumatology. The leading countries were Australia, Israel, Switzerland, the USA, and Germany, and the leading institution was the University of Melbourne. The majority of articles among the top 10 articles were clinical research studies (n = 8), followed by a basic research article and a non-systematic review article.
    Conclusions: This bibliometric analysis revealed interesting information about scientific progress in endodontics regarding fractured instruments. Overall, clinical research studies and basic research articles published in high-impact endodontic journals had the highest citation rates.
    Keywords:  File fracture; Instrumentation; Nickel-titanium files; Root canal preparations; Root canal treatment
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.5395/rde.2019.44.e2
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