bims-evares Biomed News
on Evaluation of research
Issue of 2020–02–16
fiveteen papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society



  1. PLoS One. 2020 ;15(2): e0228713
      This study provides an overview of science from the Wikipedia perspective. A methodology has been established for the analysis of how Wikipedia editors regard science through their references to scientific papers. The method of co-citation has been adapted to this context in order to generate Pathfinder networks (PFNET) that highlight the most relevant scientific journals and categories, and their interactions in order to find out how scientific literature is consumed through this open encyclopaedia. In addition to this, their obsolescence has been studied through Price index. A total of 1 433 457 references available at Altmetric.com have been initially taken into account. After pre-processing and linking them to the data from Elsevier's CiteScore Metrics the sample was reduced to 847 512 references made by 193 802 Wikipedia articles to 598 746 scientific articles belonging to 14 149 journals indexed in Scopus. As highlighted results we found a significative presence of "Medicine" and "Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology" papers and that the most important journals are multidisciplinary in nature, suggesting also that high-impact factor journals were more likely to be cited. Furthermore, only 13.44% of Wikipedia citations are to Open Access journals.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228713
  2. Nature. 2020 02;578(7794): 328
      
    Keywords:  Careers; Communication; Publishing
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00266-3
  3. Ann Transl Med. 2019 Dec;7(24): 812
       Background: The past decade has witnessed a rapid increase in the number of contributors per article, which has made explicitly defining the roles of each contributor even more challenging. The Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) was developed to explicitly define author roles, but there is a lack of empirical data on how CRediT is used in clinical trials. This study aimed to provide empirical data on the use of CRediT in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and discuss some limitations of CRediT. A new taxonomy (CRediT-RCT) is proposed to explicitly define the author roles in RCTs.
    Methods: The electronic database of PubMed was searched from July 2017 to October 2019 to identify component trials with a randomized controlled design. Publications from the Public Library of Science (PLoS) were included because they embed the CRediT roles within the authors' metadata rather than solely as a separate paragraph of text.
    Results: A total of 446 articles involving 4,185 authors were included in the study. Most authors participated in the study's conceptualization (44.9%) and investigation (48.8%), but only a fraction of the authors participated in software management (7.4%). Many CRediT roles were correlated with each other: the strongest correlation was the one between funding acquisition and conceptualization (correlation metric =0.39), followed by the one between conceptualization and methodology (0.37). The authors who acquired funding (OR: 2.06; 95% CI: 1.54-2.76; P<0.001), did project administration (OR: 1.54; 95% CI: 1.17-2.03; P=0.002), performed supervision (OR: 2. 60; 95% CI: 1.93-3.52; P<0.001), wrote the original draft (OR: 4.83; 95% CI: 3.54-6.60; P<0.001), or were the first author (OR: 7.85; 95% CI: 5.71-10.87; P<0.001), were more likely to be the corresponding author. Also, while the original draft writing was significantly associated with the designation of the first author (OR: 37.49; 95% CI: 25.29-57.57; P<0.001), the first author did not perform review and editing (OR: 0.55; 95% CI: 0.40-0.75; P<0.001), supervision (OR: 0.49; 95% CI: 0.36-0.67; P<0.001), or resource management (OR: 0.71; 95% CI: 0.50-1.00; P=0.053). We further propose a novel Contributor Roles Taxonomy for Randomized Controlled Trials (CRediT-RCT) which includes 10 roles.
    Conclusions: The present study provides empirical data on the use of CRediT for RCTs, and some limitations of the taxonomy are discussed. We further propose a new CRediT-RCT which includes 10 roles.
    Keywords:  Contribution; authorship; contributor roles; randomized controlled trial; taxonomy
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.21037/atm.2019.12.96
  4. J Orthop. 2020 Jul-Aug;20:20 92-96
       Purpose: Determine the impact of self-citation on external funding for orthopedic fellowship directors.
    Methods: The San Francisco Match's website identified directors encompassing 8 subspecialties. The Scopus database identified the number of publications, citations, and h-index for each director. H-index was assessed with/without self-citation.
    Results: Mean publications, citations, self-citation rate, and h-index for the 446 directors were 71.2, 1816, 3.86%, and 18.3, respectively. Excluding self-citations reduces mean h-index to 18.0; and h-index changed by ≤ 1 integer in 95% of directors.
    Conclusions: Self-citation has minimal impact among fellowship directors and should not be adjusted for when considering external funding.
    Keywords:  External funding; Fellowship; H-index; Orthopaedic surgery; Orthopedic surgery; Self-citation
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jor.2020.01.019
  5. Front Psychol. 2019 ;10 2979
      The purpose of this study was to identify trends in the representation of female authorship regarding the topic of the status of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in higher education in the United States from 2007 to 2018 in prominent interdisciplinary journals. We conducted a comprehensive search for articles and collected the genders of the first and senior authors from 647 citations. We assessed the number of male versus female authors, the percentages of female first authors and senior authors, and the percentage of female corresponding authors for each year. Additionally, we also analyzed the citations to determine the journals and publishers who produced the most literature in this area. Women constituted 59% overall authorship and 34% first authorship. The top publishers in this area include Sage Publications, Springer/Nature, and Elsevier. Women constituted 60% of the first authors in STEM literature on the status of women and 38% of senior authors. Although there was growth over time in first authorship in STEM literature written by women, they continue to remain a minority in senior authorship. We suggest it is women that are leading this discussion, highlighting the additional lift that women in STEM in higher education must make; researching and publishing on their own experiences as part of their self-advocacy.
    Keywords:  authorship; engineering; gender; higher education; mathematics; science; technology
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02979
  6. Neurol Sci. 2020 Feb 12.
       BACKGROUND: Many patients with brain tumours exhibit mild to severe (neuro)cognitive impairments at some point during the course of the disease. Social cognition, as an instance of higher-order cognitive functioning, specifically enables initiation and maintenance of appropriate social interactions. For individuals being confronted with the diagnosis of a brain tumour, impairment of social function represents an additional burden, since those patients deeply depend on support and empathy provided by family, friends and caregivers.
    METHODS: The present study explores the scientific landscape on (socio)cognitive functioning in brain tumour patients by conducting a comprehensive bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer. The Web of Science Core Collection database was examined to identify relevant documents published between 1945 and 2019.
    RESULTS: A total of 664 English titles on (socio)cognitive functions in patients with brain tumours was retrieved. Automated textual analysis revealed that the data available so far focus on three major topics in brain tumour patients: cognitive functions in general and in paediatric cases, as well as psychological factors and their influence on quality of life. The focus of research has gradually moved from clinical studies with cognitive functions as one of the outcome measures to investigations of interactions between cognitive functions and psychological constructs such as anxiety, depression or fatigue. Medical, neurological and neuropsychological journals, in particular neuro-oncological journals published most of the relevant articles authored by a relatively small network of well interconnected researchers in the field.
    CONCLUSION: The bibliometric analysis highlights the necessity of more research on social cognition in brain tumour patients.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; Brain tumour; Cognition; Social cognition; VOSviewer
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10072-020-04276-x
  7. J Am Acad Orthop Surg. 2020 Feb 11.
       INTRODUCTION: The number of female residents in orthopaedic surgery is rising; however, orthopaedics currently has the lowest percentage of women among all medical specialties. The Hirsch index (h-index) is a metric used to determine research productivity, an important factor for academic promotion in the field of orthopaedics. The purpose of this study was to compare research productivity (using the h-index) among male and female orthopaedic surgeons at academic residency programs within the United States.
    METHODS: The websites for all Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education-accredited orthopaedic surgery residency programs in the United States were evaluated and the following information was collected: geographic region of the institution, sex, specialty, academic rank, and institutional leadership positions of faculty members. The h-index for each faculty member was collected from the Web of Science Database.
    RESULTS: H-indices of 4,323 academic orthopaedic surgeons from 160 residency programs in the United States were collected. In total, 1,587 faculty members were assistant professors (220, 13.9% women), 839 were associate professors (91, 10.8% women), 902 were professors (50, 5.5% women), and academic rank was not specified for 991 (74, 7.5% women). One hundred forty-three faculty members held the position of department chair (2, 1.4% women) and 701 were division chiefs (58, 8.3% women). In geographic regions with a greater proportion of female orthopaedic faculty members, women had greater research productivity. Among Department Chairs, associate professors, and professors there was no difference in research productivity between male and female academic orthopaedic surgeons. By contrast, among assistant professors, there was a significant difference in research productivity.
    CONCLUSION: A higher proportion of female faculty in an orthopaedic department was positively associated with increased female research productivity. Female faculty at the highest ranks and leadership positions are as academically productive as their male counterparts. Despite similar research productivity, female orthopaedic surgeons are not nearly as well represented as their male counterparts in orthopaedics in general and in leadership positions within the field. In addition, a significantly smaller research productivity among female assistant professors disappears at the higher ranks in comparison to their male counterparts. This indicates a critical gap in factors that influence research productivity according to sex at the most junior faculty rank.
    LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level III.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.5435/JAAOS-D-19-00408
  8. JCO Oncol Pract. 2020 Feb 06. OP1900255
       PURPOSE: Gender disparity persists in academic medicine. Female faculty are underrepresented in leadership positions and have lower research output. We studied gender differences in faculty rank and departmental leadership and contributing factors among academic hematologists and oncologists in the United States.
    METHODS: For clinical faculty at 146 hematology or oncology fellowship programs listed in the Fellowship and Residency Electronic Interactive Database, we collected data on demographics, academic rank, and research output using the Doximity and Scopus databases. We compared unadjusted characteristics of men and women by using 2-sided t tests and χ2 tests where appropriate. To predict probability of full professorship or leadership position among men versus women, we performed multivariable logistic regression analysis adjusted for clinical experience in years, number of publications, h-index, clinical trial investigator status, National Institutes of Health funding, and workplace ranking (top 20 v not).
    RESULTS: Two thousand one hundred sixty academic hematologists and oncologists were included. Women composed 21.9% (n = 142) of full professors, 35.7% (n = 169) of associate professors, and 45.4% (n = 415) of assistant professors. Thirty percent (n = 70) of departmental leaders were women. Female faculty, compared with male faculty, had a lower mean h-index (12.1 v 20.9, respectively; P < .001) and fewer years of professional experience since fellowship (10 v 16 years, respectively; P < .001). After adjusting for duration of clinical experience, academic productivity, and workplace ranking, the odds of obtaining professorship (odds ratio [OR], 1.05; 95% CI, 0.71 to 1.57; P = .85) or divisional leadership (OR, 0.57; 95% CI, 0.20 to 1.58; P = .28) for female physicians were not different compared with male physicians.
    CONCLUSION: Gender disparity exists in senior ranks of academic hematology and oncology; however, gender is not a significant predictor in achieving professorship or department leadership position.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1200/OP.19.00255
  9. Acta Inform Med. 2019 Dec;27(4): 259-262
       Introduction: Self-citation is a debate in citation analysis and evaluating research performance.
    Aim: This study aimed to investigate the self-citation rate of Iranian scholars in comparison with scholars of other countries in the World.
    Methods: The scientific output of 238 countries in the time span of 1996-2017(two recent decades) was studied from perspective of some bibliometric indicators, using "country ranking" section in SJR database for data collection.
    Results: Regarding self-citation rate, Iran ranked third in the world, second in Asia and first in the Middle East. However, Iran ranked 22nd in the World, second in Asia and Middle East in scientific production. Iran has self-citation rate of 36.57%, which is higher than World standard level.
    Conclusion: It is needed that Iranian researchers consider their research quality as well as making the appropriate context for more visibility of their works by receiving more citations from other researchers and taking other scientific visibility modes into account. Science policy-makers in Iran should consider some approaches to decreasing the self-citation rate in Iranian publications.
    Keywords:  Iran; SCImago; Scientometrics; Self-citation
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.5455/aim.2019.27.259-262
  10. Front Oncol. 2019 ;9 1463
      Introduction: The body of glioma-related literature has grown significantly over the past 25 years. Despite this growth in the amount of published research, gliomas remain one of the most intransigent cancers. The purpose of this study was to analyze the landscape of glioma-related research over the past 25 years using machine learning and text analysis. Methods: In April 2019, we downloaded glioma-related publications indexed in PubMed between 1994 and 2018. We used Python to extract the title, publication date, MeSH terms, and abstract from the metadata of each publication for bibliometric assessment. Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) was applied to the abstracts to identify publications' research topics with greater specificity. Results: We identified and analyzed a total of 52,625 publications in our study. We found that research on prognosis and the treatment of glioblastoma increased the most in terms of volume and rate of publications over the past 25 years. However, publications regarding clinical trials accounted for <5% of all publications considered in this study. The current research landscape covers clinical, pre-clinical, biological, and technical aspects of glioblastoma; at present, researchers appear to be less concerned with glioblastoma's psychological effects or patients' end-of-life care. Conclusion: Publication of glioma-related research has expanded rapidly over the past 25 years. Common topics include the disease's molecular background, patients' survival, and treatment outcomes; more research needs to be done on the psychological aspects of glioblastoma and end-of-life care.
    Keywords:  bibliometrics; gliomas; machine learning; natural language processing; publication analysis
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2019.01463
  11. World Neurosurg. 2020 Feb 11. pii: S1878-8750(20)30286-2. [Epub ahead of print]
       BACKGROUND: Normal pressure hydrocephalus (NPH) is a syndrome that was characterized several decades ago; however, its optimal diagnosis and management remain unclear. Our objective was to evaluate citation and bibliometric characteristics of the 100 most cited articles about NPH in order to better understand the state of current research efforts in the field and where improvements may arise.
    METHODS: Elsevier's Scopus database was searched for the 100 most cited articles that focused on NPH. Articles were characterized and various bibliometric parameters were compared. Categorical data were analyzed using Pearson's Chi-square, and continuous data were analyzed using either linear regression or Student's t-test.
    RESULTS: The 100 most cited articles were published between 1965-2014, from 16 unique countries in 38 unique journals. The most common outcome types of these articles were clinical (n=77) in nature. Median number of citations and rate of citations were 114 citations and 5.9 citations/year since publication, respectively, with a significant inverse linear relationship between the two parameters (P<0.01). The most common year of publication was 2002 (n=10), and country of origin was the United States (n=40). Higher citation rates were associated with more recent articles (P<0.01) and more authors (P<0.01).
    CONCLUSIONS: In the 100 most cited articles about NPH, there is a distinct shift towards a more globalized effort in recent decades. The lack of more impactful articles in recent decades, highlights particular classic studies still penetrate practice today, and the possible need to reconsider our contemporary views on NPH to further advance the field.
    Keywords:  NPH; bibliometric; citations; idiopathic; normal pressure hydrocephalus
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2020.02.021
  12. Investig Clin Urol. 2020 Feb;61(Suppl 1): S64-S69
      Investigative and Clinical Urology is the official journal of the Korean Urological Association (KUA). Taehan Pinyogikwa Hakhoe chi was the first version of the official journal of the KUA and was published in January 1960. The journal was renamed the Korean Journal of Urology in February 2009 and the Korean Journal of Urology changed its title to Investigative and Clinical Urology in January 2016. The official YouTube channel of Investigative and Clinical Urology has been in operation since January 2016. Investigative and Clinical Urology was registered in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) on October 30, 2018. A total of 8,103 papers were published in Investigative and Clinical Urology from January 1960 to December 2018. The most common subjects in published articles were oncology (4,602), pediatric urology (1,540), endourology & urolithiasis (1,477), and sexual dysfunction & infertility (1,285). A total of 23 articles on randomized controlled trials were published from March 2010 to December 2018. The acceptance rate of original articles in Investigative and Clinical Urology has decreased continuously since 2014. Meanwhile, the submission rate by international authors has shown an increasing trend from 2014 to 2018. As the first urologic journal in South Korea, Investigative and Clinical Urology has faithfully played its academic role in the past and present for 60 years. Since joining the SCIE list in 2018, further progress of Investigative and Clinical Urology is highly expected.
    Keywords:  History; Publications; Urology
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.4111/icu.2020.61.S1.S64
  13. Intensive Crit Care Nurs. 2020 Feb 05. pii: S0964-3397(20)30006-9. [Epub ahead of print] 102803
       OBJECTIVE: The central venous catheter is used extensively worldwide. The purpose of this bibliometric analysis was to identify the 100 top-cited systematic reviews/meta-analyses in the literature on central venous catheters and to capture the most important trends in this area of research.
    RESEARCH METHODOLOGY: A search was performed in the Web of Science Core Collection on studies published prior to November 12th, 2019. The search terms included central venous catheter, systematic review and meta-analysis. Retrieved studies were ranked by citation number and selected by two of the authors. Information such as citation number, author, institution, country and year of publication was collected.
    RESULTS: The 100 top-cited studies published between 1992 and 2017 were reviewed, with the largest proportion published in 2008 (n = 17). The number of citations ranged from 14 to 660. The country with the largest number of studies was the United States of America (n = 36). Critical Care Medicine published the greatest number of these studies (n = 13). The largest number of these studies were focused on central venous catheter-related infection (n = 56) and thrombosis (n = 19).
    CONCLUSION: Developed countries were the most productive in the field of central venous catheters. Most meta-analyses focused on complications associated with central-venous catheters such as infection and thrombosis.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; Central venous catheter; Meta-analysis; Systematic review
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iccn.2020.102803
  14. Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2020 Feb 14.
      As phosphorus plays a significant role in the maintenance of ecosystem service at watershed scale, it has been studied with a dramatic growth of publications. The bibliometric dataset of publications on watershed phosphorus was downloaded from the Science Citation Index Expanded from the Web of Science and visualized with cluster and network analysis to map global research status and trends. The results showed that annual output of articles experienced a notable increase since 1991. Most research articles on watershed phosphorus appeared in the Journal of Environmental Quality. "Environmental Sciences," "Water Resources," and "Marine Freshwater Biology" were the most popular subject categories, and a development tendency of cross-disciplinary research appeared since 2005. The USA was a leading country in total publications, collaborating closely with China, Canada, and the UK. Chinese Academy of Sciences, USDA ARS, and US Geological Survey were the most productive institutions, and Chinese Academy of Sciences has become the core force of international cooperation recently. The mainstream research related to watershed phosphorus was environmental issues like eutrophication. Moreover, phosphorus management using models (soil and water assessment tool and best management practices) has emerged as an important research direction recently. To tackle environmental issues and realize sustainable development of watershed, it is crucial to further strengthen (1) the interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly between natural and social sciences; (2) North-South, South-South, and triangular regional cooperation on science and technology; and (3) theoretical research on the impact of human activities and climate change on biogeochemical cycle of phosphorus and ecosystem integrality of watershed.
    Keywords:  Cross-disciplinary advance; International and institutional collaborations; Network analysis; Research trends and hotspots; Watershed phosphorus; Web of Science
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-07771-y
  15. Foods. 2020 Feb 10. pii: E166. [Epub ahead of print]9(2):
      Vinegar is one of the most widely used acidic condiments. In recent decades, rapid advances have been made in the area of vinegar research, and the intellectual structure pertaining to this domain has significantly evolved. Thus, it is important that scientists keep abreast of associated developments to ensure an appropriate understanding of this field. To facilitate this current study, a bibliometric analysis method was adopted to visualize the knowledge map of vinegar research based on literature data retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database. In total, 883 original research and review articles from between 1998 and 2019 with 19,663 references were analyzed by CiteSpace. Both a macroscopical sketch and microscopical characterization of the whole knowledge domain were realized. According to the research contents, the main themes that underlie vinegar research can be divided into six categories, that is, microorganisms, substances, health functions, production technologies, adjuvant medicines, and vinegar residues. In addition to the latter analysis, emerging trends and future research foci were predicted. Finally, the evolutionary stage of vinegar research was discerned according to Shneider's four-stage theory. This review will help scientists to discern the dynamic evolution of vinegar research, as well as highlight areas for future research.
    Keywords:  CiteSpace; bibliometrics; intellectual structure; knowledge mapping; vinegar
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/foods9020166