bims-evares Biomed News
on Evaluation of research
Issue of 2019–06–16
fiveteen papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society



  1. PLoS One. 2019 ;14(6): e0217918
      Our study aimed to evaluate the trends of post retraction citations of articles reporting a radiology-imaging diagnostic method and to find if a different pattern exists between manuscripts reporting an ultrasound method and those reporting other radiology diagnostic methods. This study reviewed retractions stored in PubMed on the subject of radiology-imaging diagnosis to identify the motivation, time from publication to retraction, and citations before and after retraction. The PubMed database was searched on June 2017 to retrieve the retracted articles, and the Scopus database was screened to identify the post-retraction citations. The full text was screened to see the type of post-retraction citation (positive/negative) and whether the cited article appears or not as retracted. One hundred and two retractions were identified, representing 3.5% of the retracted articles indexed by PubMed, out of which 54 were included in the analysis. Half of the articles were retracted in the first 24 months after publication, and the number of post retraction citations was higher than the number of citations before retraction in 30 out of 54 cases (US methods: 9/20, other diagnostic methods 21/34, P-value = 0.2312). The plagiarism was the most common reason for retraction (31%), followed by repetitive publication (26%), and errors in data/manuscript (24%). In less than 2% of cases, the retracted articles appear as retracted in the text or reference list, while the negative citation is observed in 4.84% among manuscripts reporting an US diagnostic method and 0.32% among manuscripts reporting a diagnostic method other than US (P-value = 0.0004). No significant differences were observed when post retraction weighted citation index (WCI, no. of citations weighted by citation window) was compared to WCI prior retraction (P-value = 0.5972). In light of the reported results, we enumerated some recommendations that could potentially minimize the referral to retracted studies as valid.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0217918
  2. AJR Am J Roentgenol. 2019 Jun 10. 1-4
      OBJECTIVE. The impact of open access (OA) journals is still understudied in the field of radiology. In this study, we compared the measures of impact (e.g., CiteScore, citation count, SCImago Journal Rank) between OA and subscription radiology journals. MATERIALS AND METHODS. We collected data on journals included in the Scopus Source List on November 1, 2018. We filtered the list for radiology journals for the years from 2011 to 2017. OA journals covered by Scopus (Elsevier) are indicated as OA if the journal is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources, or both. We also compared citation metrics between OA and subscription radiology journals. RESULTS. The 2017 Scopus report included 265 radiology journals. The percentage of OA journals increased from 14.7% in 2011 to 21.9% in 2017 (49% increase). The median scholarly output and the citation count were both significantly lower in OA radiology journals compared with subscription journals (p < 0.001 and p = 0.016, respectively). The proportion of documents that received at least one citation was higher in OA (50.2%) compared with subscription journals (44.4%), but the difference was not statistically significant. CONCLUSION. This study found that the trend toward OA publishing in the fields of radiology and nuclear medicine has slowed in recent years, although the percent cited (i.e., the proportion of documents that receive at least one citation) is higher for OA journals. We believe the radiology field should be more supportive of OA publishing.
    Keywords:  Scopus; bibliometry; journals; open access; radiology
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2214/AJR.19.21215
  3. Perspect Psychol Sci. 2019 Jun 14. 1745691619835216
      During the methods crisis in psychology and other sciences, much discussion developed online in forums such as blogs and other social media. Hence, this increasingly popular channel of scientific discussion itself needs to be explored to inform current controversies, record the historical moment, improve methods communication, and address equity issues. Who posts what about whom, and with what effect? Does a particular generation or gender contribute more than another? Do blogs focus narrowly on methods, or do they cover a range of issues? How do they discuss individual researchers, and how do readers respond? What are some impacts? Web-scraping and text-analysis techniques provide a snapshot characterizing 41 current research-methods blogs in psychology. Bloggers mostly represented psychology's traditional leaderships' demographic categories: primarily male, mid- to late career, associated with American institutions, White, and with established citation counts. As methods blogs, their posts mainly concern statistics, replication (particularly statistical power), and research findings. The few posts that mentioned individual researchers substantially focused on replication issues; they received more views, social-media impact, comments, and citations. Male individual researchers were mentioned much more often than female researchers. Further data can inform perspectives about these new channels of scientific communication, with the shared aim of improving scientific practices.
    Keywords:  blogs; natural language processing; replicability; research methods; social media
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691619835216
  4. Front Pharmacol. 2019 ;10 564
      Purpose: There are previous reviews focused on Sigma-1 receptor but no bibliometric studies examining this field as a whole. This article aims to present a global view of Sigma-1 receptor research and its intellectual structure. Methods: We used bibliometric indicators of a basic nature as well as techniques for the visualization and analysis of networks of scientific information extracted from Scopus database. Results: In total, 1,102 articles from 1992 to 2017 were identified. The growth in the production of articles is not constant over time, with periods of stagnation of approximately 5 years. Only 247 authors have five or more publications. The authors appear grouped in relatively independent clusters, thus suggesting a low level of collaborations between those dedicated to the Sigma-1 receptor. The United States was the country with the highest production followed by Japan and Germany. Spain, Japan, and Italy showed the highest per million inhabitants ratio. The highest citation/article ratio was reached in France, United States, and Canada. The leading institutions were the University of Münster, the National Institutes of Health, ESTEVE, and INSERM. The top authors in number of publications were Wünsch-B, Schepmann-D, and Maurice-T. Hayashi-T, Su-TP and Bowen-WD showed the highest citations per article. The article by Hayashi-T and Su-TP in Cell (2007) describing the Sigma-1 receptor as a chaperone protein is the top cited reference. Cluster labeling from author co-citation analysis shows that research has been focused on specific diseases such as addiction, neuroprotection and neurodegenerative diseases, psychiatric disorders, and pain. High-frequency terms in author keywords suggest that the research efforts in some areas such as neuroimaging, cocaine addiction or psychiatric disorders have declined over time, while others such as neurodegenerative diseases or pain are currently most popular. Perspective: A greater involvement of the scientific community, with an increase in the scientific production related to Sigma-1, is desirable. Additional boost needed to improve research performance is likely to come from combining data from different laboratories to overcome the limitations of individual approaches. The resulting maps are a useful and attractive tool for the Sigma-1 receptor research community, as they reveal the main lines of exploration at a glance.
    Keywords:  VOSviewer; bibliometrics; co-authorship analysis; co-citation analysis; co-occurrence analysis; scopus; sigma-1 receptor
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2019.00564
  5. PeerJ. 2019 ;7 e7041
      Coral disease research encompasses five decades of undeniable progress. Since the first descriptions of anomalous signs, we have come to understand multiple processes and environmental drivers that interact with coral pathologies. In order to gain a better insight into the knowledge we already have, we explored how key topics in coral disease research have been related to each other using network analysis. We reviewed 719 papers and conference proceedings published from 1965 to 2017. From each study, four elements determined our network nodes: (1) studied disease(s); (2) host genus; (3) marine ecoregion(s) associated with the study site; and (4) research objectives. Basic properties of this network confirmed that there is a set of specific topics comprising the majority of research. The top five diseases, genera, and ecoregions studied accounted for over 48% of the research effort in all cases. The community structure analysis identified 15 clusters of topics with different degrees of overlap among them. These clusters represent the typical sets of elements that appear together for a given study. Our results show that while some coral diseases have been studied considering multiple aspects, the overall trend is for most diseases to be understood under a limited range of approaches, e.g., bacterial assemblages have been considerably studied in Yellow and Black band diseases while immune response has been better examined for the aspergillosis-Gorgonia system. Thus, our challenge in the near future is to identify and resolve potential gaps in order to achieve a more comprehensive progress on coral disease research.
    Keywords:  Community structure; Coral disease; Network analysis; Research trends
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7041
  6. Afr J Emerg Med. 2019 Jun;9(2): 101-105
       Introduction: Evidence based medicine is the standard of modern health care practices. Ongoing biomedical research is needed to expand existing knowledge and improve quality of care, but it needs to reach clinicians to drive change. Journal articles and conference presentations are dissemination tools. The aim of the study was to establish the publication rate of scientific abstracts presented at the first and second African Conference of Emergency Medicine. The secondary objectives were establishing non-publication dissemination and the factors associated with publication and non-publication. Determining non-publication dissemination patterns and the factors associated with reasons for publishing or non-publication were also investigated.
    Methods: Presenters of the 129 scientific abstracts from the first and second African Conference of Emergency Medicine were invited to participate in an online survey. The survey was followed by a manual literature search to identify published manuscripts of authors that did not complete the survey, to determine the most accurate publication rate.
    Results: Thirty-one presenters responded (24%), of which 18 published in a peer-reviewed journal. An additional 25 publications were identified by the literature search. The overall publication rate was 33.3% (26.9% from 2012 and 40.3% from 2014). Oral presentations were more likely to be published (p = 0.09). Sixteen manuscripts (37.2%) were published in the African Journal of Emergency Medicine. Presentations at local academic meetings were the most used platform beyond publication (43%). The main reason to publish was to add to the body of knowledge (100%), while lack of time (57%) was the major obstacle for not publishing.
    Conclusion: The overall publication rate for the first and second Africa Conferences of Emergency Medicine is comparable to other non-African Emergency Medicine conferences. The increasing publication trend between conferences might reflect the development of regional research capacity. Emergency Medicine providers in Africa need to be encouraged to participate in high quality, locally relevant research and to distribute those findings through accessible formats.
    Keywords:  Africa; Barriers; Conference; Dissemination; Publication
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.afjem.2019.01.012
  7. Heliyon. 2019 May;5(5): e01724
      A bibliometric analysis of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) content from a total of 15.020 research publications was conducted between 2008 and 2018, the papers being detailed in the online version of SCI-Expanded, Thomson Reuters Web of Science. Data processing tools such as Hitscite, CiteSpace, ArcGIS and Ucinet 6 were used to process the information. The parameters analyzed in the analysis were: type of document; the language of publication; volume and characteristics of publication output; publication by journals; performance of countries and research institutions; research trends and visibility. The study showed that "Fuel'', "Cell", "Membrane "and "Proton" were found in most of the titles of the documents, while "Performance", "Pemfc", "Pem Fuel Cell" and "Fuel Cell" were the keywords most commonly used in documents. The analysis found that PEMFC studies have tended to be growing and that leading peer-reviewed journals have produced numerous publications on the subject. The investigation revealed that the country with the most significant production in the field is USA with a contribution of 3009; 20% of the total publications. Followed by China 2480; 16.5%, South Korea 1273; 8.5% and Germany 1121; 7.5%, showing to the main world powers as the most significant contributors to the research.
    Keywords:  Energy
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e01724
  8. Sensors (Basel). 2019 Jun 09. pii: E2615. [Epub ahead of print]19(11):
      The number of scholarly publications on the topic of biosensors has increased rapidly; as a result, it is no longer easy to build an informed overview of the developments solely by manual means. Furthermore, with many new research results being continually published, it is useful to form an up-to-date understanding of the recent trends or emergent directions in the field. This paper utilizes bibliometric methods to provide an overview of the developments in the topic based on scholarly publications. The results indicate an increasing interest in the topic of biosensor(s) with newly emerging sub-topics. The US is identified as the country with highest total contribution to this area, but as a collective, EU countries top the list of total contributions. An examination of trends over the years indicates that in recent years, China-based authors have been more productive in this area. If research contribution per capita is considered, Singapore takes the top position, followed by Sweden, Switzerland and Denmark. While the number of publications on biosensors seems to have declined in recent years in the PubMed database, this is not the case in the Web of Science database. However, there remains an indication that the rate of growth in the more recent years is slowing. This paper also presents a comparison of the developments in publications on biosensors with the full set of publications in two of the main journals in the field. In more recent publications, synthetic biology, smartphone, fluorescent biosensor, and point-of-care testing are among the terms that have received more attention. The study also identifies the top authors and journals in the field, and concludes with a summary and suggestions for follow up research.
    Keywords:  bibliometrics; biosensors; emerging trends; scholarly publications
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/s19112615
  9. Int J Prev Med. 2019 ;10 60
       Background: Interest in using peritoneal dialysis (PD) shows global and national increase. However, it remains a challenge to prevent the progression of PD-associated fibrosis in clinical practice. Here, we assessed the status of scientific publications in prevention and management of PD-associated fibrosis in a scientometric study.
    Methods: We retrieved the bibliometric data by search terms "encapsulating peritoneal fibrosis," "treatment or prevention," and their synonyms in the Scopus databases until December 2, 2017. Data were analyzed using Scopus analysis tools, SPSS version 15 and Visualizing Scientific Landscapes viewer version 1.6.5.
    Results: Number of publications showed a steady significant increase (P < 0.001) reaching to 390 documents. Japan had the highest share (21.3%) followed by United Kingdom. Coauthorship network assessment assigned "Ikeda M." from Japan as the top author. The top source of documents was "Peritoneal Dialysis International." Most of documents were original articles focusing on prevention and management of malignant fibrosis of peritoneum (72.6%). The documents were cited totally 5636 times with average citations per article of 14.45, and relatively high H-index of 38.
    Conclusions: Despite the global increasing trend in scientific output in this field, contribution of our country is very small. Perhaps more national and international collaboration is required to encourage our researchers for producing more scientific products.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; peritoneal fibrosis; preventive measures; therapeutics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.4103/ijpvm.IJPVM_549_17
  10. Front Mol Neurosci. 2019 ;12 143
      Background: Monoamine oxidases (MAOs) were discovered nearly a century ago. This article aims to analyze the research literature landscape associated with MAOs as privileged class of neuronal enzymes (neuroenzymes) with key functions in the processes of neurodegeneration, serving as important biological targets in neuroscience. With the accumulating publications on this topic, we aimed to evaluate the publication and citation performance of the contributors, reveal the popular research themes, and identify its historical roots. Methods: The electronic database of Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection was searched to identify publications related to MAOs, which were analyzed according to their publication year, authorship, institutions, countries/regions, journal title, WoS category, total citation count, and publication type. VOSviewer was utilized to visualize the citation patterns of the words appearing in the titles and abstracts, and author keywords. CRExplorer was utilized to identify seminal references cited by the MAO publications. Results: The literature analysis was based on 19,854 publications. Most of them were original articles (n = 15,148, 76.3%) and reviews (n = 2,039, 10.3%). The top five WoS categories of the analyzed MAO publications were Pharmacology/Pharmacy (n = 4,664, 23.5%), Neurosciences (n = 4,416, 22.2%), Psychiatry (n = 2,906, 14.6%), Biochemistry/Molecular Biology (n = 2,691, 13.6%), and Clinical Neurology (n = 1,754, 8.8%). The top 10 institutions are scattered in the United States, UK, France, Sweden, Canada, Israel, and Russia, while the top 10 countries/regions with the most intensive research on the field of MAOs are the United States, followed by European and Asian countries. More highly cited publications generally involved neurotransmitters, such as dopamine (DA), serotonin, and norepinephrine (NE), as well as the MAO-A inhibitors moclobemide and clorgyline, and the irreversible MAO-B inhibitors selegiline and rasagiline. Conclusion: Through decades of research, the literature has accumulated many publications investigating the therapeutic effects of MAO inhibitors (MAOIs) on various neurological conditions, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD), and depression. We envision that MAO literature will continue to grow steadily, with more new therapeutic candidates being tested for better management of neurological conditions, in particular, with the development of multi-target acting drugs against neurodegenerative diseases.
    Keywords:  Alzheimer’s disease; Parkinson’s disease; bibliometrics; depression; history; molecular neuroscience; monoamine oxidase; tyramine
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fnmol.2019.00143
  11. Acta Odontol Scand. 2019 Jun 07. 1-10
      Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify the 100 top-cited articles in endodontics and analyse their bibliometric characteristics. Material and methods: The Web of Science database was reviewed to identify the relevant articles. Results: One hundred and three articles were included because the last four articles had the same number of citations. The top-cited article received 2115 citations. The articles were published in 28 different journals, with the most popular publication being the Journal of Endodontics (n = 36). The most prolific country was the United States (n = 41), followed by Sweden (n = 17) and Switzerland (n = 8). The most prolific author and institution were M. Torabinejad (n = 12) and Umeå University (n = 9), respectively. The majority of articles were of a basic science nature (n = 55), while endodontic microbiology (n = 24) was the most frequent subspecialty. The most common study design used in clinical articles was non-randomized experimental study (n = 5). Half of the clinical articles (n = 11) had a level III evidence score. Conclusions: The present citation analysis provides insights into the historical progress and current trends in endodontics.
    Keywords:  Bibliometrics; citation; classical article; endodontics; research design
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/00016357.2019.1621378
  12. Ann Med Surg (Lond). 2019 Jul;43 5-12
       Background: Emergency Cardiac Surgery (ECS) is a component of cardiothoracic training. Citations are considered to represent a papers influence. Bibliometric analyses allow us to identify the most influential work, and future research. We aim to highlight the key research themes within ECS and determine their potential impact on cardiothoracic training.
    Methods: Thomas Reuters Web of Science was searched using terms [Emergency AND Card* AND Surg*]. Results were ranked by citation and reviewed by a panel of cardiac surgeons to identify the top 100 cited papers relevant to ECS. Papers were analysed by topic, journal and impact. Regression analysis was used to determine a link between impact factor and scientific impact.
    Results: 3823 papers were identified. Median citations for the top 100 was 88. The paper with the highest impact was by Nashef et al. focusing on the use of EuroSCORE (2043 citations). The Annals of Thoracic Surgery published most papers (n = 18:1778 citations). The European Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery coveted the most citations (n = 2649). The USA published most papers (n = 55).The most ubiquitous topics were; risk stratification, circulatory support and aortic surgery. A positive relationship between journal impact fact and the scientific impact of manuscripts in ECS (P = 0.043) was deduced.
    Conclusion: This study is the first of its kind and identified the papers which are likely to the contribute most to training and understanding of ECS. A papers influence is partially determined by journal impact factor. Bibliometric analysis is a potent tool to identify surgical training needs.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; Citations; Emergency cardiac surgery; Training
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amsu.2019.05.002
  13. Med Sci Monit. 2019 Jun 14. 25 4414-4422
      This study aimed to determine the number and quality of scientific publications in dentistry from the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia between 1996 and 2018 using bibliometric analysis. Web of Science and Scopus were searched to identify scientific publications in dentistry between 1996 and 2018 by authors from centers in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. The annual number of scientific publications, citation rate, and h-index for each publication, and trends in international co-authorship were investigated by country and institution. There were 651 scientific publications in dentistry between 1996 and 2018, by authors from Lithuania (280 publications), Latvia (210 publications), and Estonia (161 publications). Publications from Estonia were ranked highest in qualitative terms (citation rate and h-index), followed by Lithuania, and Latvia. Of 28 authors with at least ten publications, 54% were Lithuanian (15 authors), 25% were Estonian (7 authors), and 21% were Latvian (6 authors). Estonian authors collaborated mainly with Finland (27 publications), Latvian authors with the USA (16 publications), and Lithuanian authors with Canada (26 publications). Most publications came from the academic institutions of the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (136 publications), the University of Tartu (109 publications), Vilnius University (101 publications), and Riga Stradins University (28 publications). During the past 22 years, authors from Lithuania had the most publications in the field of dentistry, and authors from Estonia had the most cited publications. Authors mainly published in native journals and collaborated with authors in Scandinavia and North America.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.12659/MSM.914223
  14. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Jun 05. pii: E2010. [Epub ahead of print]16(11):
      While there is a progressive ageing of the population, we are witnessing a rapid development of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). Although for most of society this technology is within reach, there are population segments for whom access is limited, especially adults who are considered of old age. Due to the relevance that the relationship between ICTs and older adults acquires in today's society, it is necessary to carry out an analysis of the scientific literature in order to understand the knowledge structure of this field. In this research, a comparative bibliometric analysis of 172 documents published in the Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases was carried out until 2018 and is complemented by a co-citation analysis. The results show that this subject is incipient and is in its exponential growth stage, with two thirds of the production concentrated in the 2012-2018 period. Four out of five authors are transient with a single authorship and the collaboration level is high. The most productive country is Germany followed by the United States and Australia.
    Keywords:  ICTs; Scopus; WoS; bibliometric Study; information and communication technologies; older adults; scientific coverage
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16112010