bims-evares Biomed News
on Evaluation of research
Issue of 2020–03–01
seventeen papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society



  1. Am J Sports Med. 2020 Feb 28. 363546520903703
       BACKGROUND: Citation rate and journal impact factor have traditionally been used to assess research impact; however, these may fail to represent impact beyond the sphere of academics. Given that social media is now used to disseminate research, alternative web-based metrics (altmetrics) were recently developed to better understand research impact on social media. However, the relationship between altmetrics and traditional bibliometrics in orthopaedic literature is poorly understood.
    PURPOSE: To (1) assess the extent that altmetrics correlate with traditional bibliometrics and (2) identify publication characteristics that predict greater altmetrics scores.
    STUDY DESIGN: Cross-sectional study.
    METHODS: Articles published in The American Journal of Sports Medicine (AJSM), The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, Acta Orthopaedica, and Knee Surgery, Sports Traumatology, Arthroscopy between January 2016 and December 2016 were analyzed. Among the extracted publication characteristics were journal, number of authors, geographic region of origin, highest degree of first author, study subject and design, sample size, conflicts of interest, and level of evidence; number of references, institutions, citations, tweets, Facebook mentions, and news mentions; and Altmetric Attention Score (AAS). Multivariate regressions were used to determine (1) publication characteristics predictive of AAS and social media attention (mentions on Twitter, Facebook, and the news) and (2) the relationship between AAS and citation rate.
    RESULTS: A total of 496 published articles were included, with a mean AAS of 8.6 (SD, 31.7; range, 0-501) and a mean citation rate of 15.0 (SD, 16.1; range, 0-178). Articles in AJSM (β = 19.9; P < .001), publications from North America (β = 8.5; P = .033), and studies concerning measure validation/reliability (β = 25.5; P = .004) were independently associated with higher AAS. Greater AAS score significantly predicted a greater citation rate (β = 0.16; P < .0001). The citation rate was an independent predictor of greater social media attention on Twitter, Facebook, and the news (odds ratio range, 1.02-1.03; P < .05 all).
    CONCLUSION: AAS had a significant positive association with citation rates of articles in 5 high-impact orthopaedic journals. Articles in AJSM, studies concerning measure validation and reliability, and publications from North America were positively associated with greater AAS. A greater number of citations was consistently associated with publication attention received on social media platforms.
    Keywords:  altmetrics; bibliometrics; citation rate; impact factor; orthopaedics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/0363546520903703
  2. Nature. 2018 Mar;555(7696): 311
      
    Keywords:  Careers; Publishing
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-02965-4
  3. Nature. 2018 Mar;555(7698): 691
      
    Keywords:  Authorship; Careers
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-03804-2
  4. An Pediatr (Barc). 2020 Feb 22. pii: S1695-4033(20)30040-0. [Epub ahead of print]
       INTRODUCTION: Some studies have shown a lower female participation in scientific publications. The objective of this study is to analyse the gender inequalities in the main Spanish journals of medical publications.
    MATERIAL AND METHOD: Cross-sectional study of the main Spanish medical journals classified by SCImago Journal & Country Ranking (n=24) and their publications (n=3.375), during the year 2017. Women/men ratio in authorship was calculated for all journals and types of papers. Bivariate analyses were developed with the type of article as the dependent variable, and gender, institution, and country of the first and last authors as the independent variables. Logistic regression models were performed to calculate adjusted odds ratios (aOR) and their 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) of the types of papers according to authorship gender, institution, and country. The statistical program used was R.
    RESULTS: The total number of authors was 16,252 (44.2% women, 53.9% men, and 1.9% non-identified gender). Women represented 46% of the first authors and 33.5% of the last ones. Women were the first authors of Editorials less often than men (aOR 0.39; 95% CI 0.30-0.51), but more often in Originals (aOR 1.55; 95% CI 1.33-1.80). Women were the last authors with less frequency in all types of papers, especially in Editorials (aOR 0.50; 95% CI 0.35-0.70). The women/men ratio in authorship was less than 0.80 in 10 of 26 journals analysed (41.7%).
    CONCLUSIONS: These results show the gender inequalities in the authorship of the main Spanish medical journals in 2017, especially as first authors and Editorials.
    Keywords:  Authorship; Autoría; Desigualdades de género; Gender bias; Gender inequalities; Health Services Research; Investigación en Servicios de Salud; Medical publications; Publicaciones médicas; Sesgo de género
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anpedi.2020.01.017
  5. J Int Med Res. 2020 Feb;48(2): 300060520903616
      
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; MEDLINE; biomedical journals; hospital volunteers; survey; volunteers
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/0300060520903616
  6. BMJ Open. 2020 Feb 25. 10(2): e034056
       BACKGROUND: Scholarship plays a direct role in career advancement, promotion and authoritative recognition, and women physicians remain under-represented as authors of original research articles.
    OBJECTIVE: We sought to determine if women physician authors are similarly under-represented in commentary articles within high-impact journals.
    DESIGN/SETTING/PARTICIPANTS: In this observational study, we abstracted and analysed author information (gender and degree) and authorship position from commentary articles published in three high-impact journals between 1 January 2014 and 16 October 2018.
    PRIMARY OUTCOME MEASURE: Authorship rate of commentary articles over a 5-year period by gender, degree, authorship position and journal.
    SECONDARY OUTCOME MEASURES: To compare the proportion of men and women physician authorship of commentaries relative to the proportion of men and women physician faculty within academic medicine; and to examine the gender concordance among the last and first authors in articles with more than one author.
    RESULTS: Of the 2087 articles during the study period, 48% were men physician first authors compared with 17% women physician first authors (p<0.0001). Of the 1477 articles with more than one author, similar distributions were found with regard to last authors: 55% were men physicians compared with only 12% women physicians (p<0.0001). The proportion of women physician first authors increased over time; however, the proportion of women physician last authors remained stagnant. Women coauthored with women in the first and last authorship positions in 9% of articles. In contrast, women coauthored with men in the first and last author positions, respectively, in 55% of articles.
    CONCLUSIONS: Women physician authors remain under-represented in commentary articles compared with men physician authors in the first and last author positions. Women also coauthored commentaries with other women in far fewer numbers.
    Keywords:  authorship; commentary articles; gender disparity
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-034056
  7. Insights Imaging. 2020 Feb 27. 11(1): 42
       PURPOSE: We aimed to assess the role of radiologists, cardiologists, and other medical and non-medical figures in cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) research in the last 34 years, focusing on first and last authorship, number of published studies, and journal impact factors (IF).
    METHODS: Articles in the field of cardiac MRI were considered in this systematic review and retrospective bibliometric analysis. For included studies, the first and last authors were categorized as cardiologists, radiologists/nuclear medicine physicians, medical doctors (MD) with specialties in both cardiology and radiology/nuclear medicine, and other MD and non-MD. Differences in the number of papers published overall and by year and institution location for the first and last author category were assessed. Mean IF differences between author categories were also investigated.
    RESULTS: A total of 2053 articles were included in the final analysis. For the first authors (n = 2011), 52% were cardiologists, 22% radiologists/nuclear medicine physicians, 16% other MD, 10% other non-MD, and 1% both cardiologists and radiologists/nuclear medicine physicians. Similarly, the last authors (n = 2029) resulted 54% cardiologists, 22% radiologists/nuclear medicine physicians, 15% other MD, 8% other non-MD, and 2% both cardiologists and radiologists/nuclear medicine physicians. No significant differences due to institution location in the first and last authorship proportions were found. Average journal IF was significantly higher for cardiologist first and last authors when compared to that of radiologists/nuclear medicine physicians (both p < 0.0001).
    CONCLUSION: Over 50% of studies in the field of cardiac MRI published in the last 34 years are conducted by cardiologists.
    Keywords:  Heart; Magnetic resonance imaging; Systematic review
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s13244-020-00850-1
  8. Toxicol Ind Health. 2020 Jan;36(1): 22-29
       BACKGROUND: In recent years, nanoparticles have been widely used in many fields, ranging from cosmetics, agriculture, environment, and biomedical areas. The increasing use of nanoproducts induces a potential increasing exposure to human body, and then, unknown pathological consequences could increase.
    METHODS: The database was searched from 2008 to 2018 by the Web of Science Core Collection. The bibliometric methods, CiteSpace and HistCite, were used for analysis and visualization of the data.
    RESULTS: The 2932 publications were analyzed and the annual publications grew from 78 to 512 in a decade. The United States and China mainly contribute to this research area, which accounted for 29.5% and 22.9%, respectively. PLoS One, Scientific Reports, and Nanoscale were the three journals that published the most articles. Keyword analysis indicated that the major research direction was the mechanisms of nanoneurotoxicity, which included oxidative stress, inflammation, astrocyte activation, and the fibrillation of amyloid β protein.
    CONCLUSION: This bibliometric study revealed that nanoneurotoxicity was still a research hot topic and could be a promising area of research in the next few years. Nanoparticles play a role in neurodegenerative diseases by inducing reactive oxygen species production, inflammation, alterations of gene expression, and signal pathways.
    Keywords:  Nanoparticle; bibliometric analysis; inflammation; neurotoxicity; oxidative stress
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/0748233719900844
  9. Transplant Proc. 2020 Feb 25. pii: S0041-1345(19)31777-4. [Epub ahead of print]
       BACKGROUND: Although the topic of brain death (BD) has been increasing in popularity considerably in recent years by the snowballing number of patients suffering from end-organ failure and waiting for organ transplantation, the literature indicates insufficient information regarding the comparison of scientific articles focusing on BD, authors' and nations', even governments' tendency about this issue.
    OBJECTIVES: In the present study, we aimed to make a bibliometric analysis of the articles focusing on the subject of BD, which is one of the most trendy topics in organ transplantation.
    MATERIAL AND METHODS: The terms "brain death," were searched in Thomson Reuters, Web of Science search engine for the years between 1995 and 2019. All the articles found were subjected to bibliometric analysis.
    RESULTS: Web of Science database included 3487 articles. The United States was found to be the most productive country in all methods, and Transplantation Proceedings was the journal that contributed most to the literature on the subject of BD. A positive correlation between publication productivity and gross domestic product/gross domestic product per capita and human development index was found (r = 0.470, P < .05; r = 0.359, P < .05; r = 0.603, P < .001, respectively). Also, there was a negative correlation between the number of published articles and the population of the country (r = -0.083, P < .001).
    CONCLUSION: Although the top country focusing on the subject of BD was the United States in terms of bibliometrics, we found that there is a correlation between the indices measuring the welfare and development level of the country and publication productivity about BD, which means developed countries show more tendency about BD, which is the main component of the definitive treatment of end-organ failure.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.transproceed.2020.01.034
  10. J Clin Orthop Trauma. 2020 Mar-Apr;11(2):11(2): 176-183
       Background: We have studied the growth of Journal of Clinical Orthopaedics and Trauma (JCOT), the official journal of the Delhi Orthopaedic Association indexed in PubMed, Scopus and Embase, along with an analysis of citation trends and levels of evidence of published articles in the last five years.
    Methods: SCOPUS and PubMed databases (2015-19) were used to extract publication-related data for the last five years. The official website of the journal was also used to retrieve issue-specific data. An audit of recent publications in the JCOT was conducted focusing on number of issues and publications(year wise), types of articles published, review speed, level of evidence of publications, types of publication(speciality wise), number of publications in PubMed and SCOPUS, number of citations(year wise), national and international authorship and the Cite Scores.
    Results: The submissions were increased by 2.8 times and the citations rocketed to 16.6 times in 2019, compared to 2015. A total of 890 papers were there and the journal was cited 1702 times in the last five years. More articles with higher levels of evidence papers are now being published.
    Conclusion: There has been a significant increase in the numbers of submissions, publications, citations, Cite Score, h-index and contribution by the International authors. Its Editorial efficiency has also been outstanding with timely reviews and editorial decisions. The JCOT has become increasingly internationally relevant in the last five years, in the orthopaedic community. However, JCOT needs to publish more papers with a higher level of evidence like Systematic reviews, Meta-analyses, Randomized Controlled Trials and should only publish top-class lower hierarchy papers (like Case reports, Case-controlled and Retrospective studies).
    Keywords:  Audit; Bibliometrics; Journal; Orthopaedic; Publications; Pubmed; Research; SCOPUS; Scientometrics; Trauma
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcot.2020.01.009
  11. J Pain Res. 2020 ;13 367-376
       Objective: A bibliometric approach using quantitative analytical methods was applied to explore the development of research investigating acupuncture for the treatment of pain. This study also evaluated the current status of acupuncture analgesia with a visualization analysis of journal articles.
    Methods: Articles on acupuncture for pain control that were published from 2000 to 2019 were retrieved from the Web of Science database. Extracted records were analyzed in terms of year of publication, country, journal, research area, authors, and organizational affiliations. The VOSviewer program was used to visualize trends in research on acupuncture for pain control.
    Results: Analyses of 4595 original and review articles revealed that the total number of publications has continually increased over the last 20 years. The country producing the most articles in this field was the United States, followed by China and South Korea. A network analysis based on the cooccurrence of keywords revealed the following three major types of studies: clinical studies, pain management studies, and mechanism studies.
    Conclusion: The present study evaluated research on acupuncture for pain control using bibliometric methods and revealed current trends in acupuncture analgesia research, as well as potential future hot spots of research in this field.
    Keywords:  acupuncture; analgesia; bibliometric analysis; network analysis; pain
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2147/JPR.S235047
  12. J Matern Fetal Neonatal Med. 2020 Feb 27. 1-12
      Background: Subclinical hypothyroidism (SCH) in pregnancy has drawn an increasing amount of attention over the past two decades. However, the definition of it, including its clinical diagnosis and treatment, is still being revised. An increased risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes have been shown in most but not all studies. The objective of this study was to evaluate the origin, current trend and research hotspots on SCH in pregnancy.Methods: We obtained 630 records with 12,033 references, published between 1999 and 2018, from the online version of SCI-Expanded, Thomson Reuters Web of Science. The CiteSpace 5.3.R4 was used to perform the cooperation network analysis, key words co-occurrence and burst detection analysis, and reference cocitation analysis.Results: We identified that the number of publications on SCH in pregnancy was increasing over the past two decades. Teng WP and Shan ZY from the First Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, China, were found to be the most productive researchers in this field. USA was the leading country for publications. Subclinical hypothyroidism, pregnancy, hypothyroidism, dysfunction, disease, management, women, deficiency, association and hyperthyroidism were the top 10 high frequency keywords in all recruit documents. Follow up was the most strength burst key word in this field from 1999 through 2018, followed by maternal hypothyroxinemia, child, hypothyroidism complicating pregnancy, antithyroid antibody and fetal. Moreover, cocitation reference analysis revealed the top landmark articles and clusters in this field.Conclusion: This study provides the trends and frontiers in the field of SCH in pregnancy and valuable information for endocrine and/or obstetric researchers to identify new perspectives on potential collaborators and cooperative countries.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; CiteSpace; pregnancy; subclinical hypothyroidism
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/14767058.2020.1729731
  13. 3 Biotech. 2020 Mar;10(3): 106
      This bibliometric-based review analyses the trends in 1010 published articles (1990 to mid-2018) on the high-value application of Chlorella, and illustrates the evolution and latest tendencies at a global level by the number of publications and their distribution, issuing institutions and countries or regions, the sources and research direction, as well as the core-author and keywords. The results demonstrated that there is a burst in terms of the number of articles, and China, USA, Mexico, and Japan are the dominant countries in this area. The most relevant journals with this subject are Bioresource Technology and Hydrobiology, and the research mainly focuses on marine and freshwater biology, biotechnology and applied microbiology, energy and fuels, food science and technology, and environmental sciences. Overall, bibliometric analysis has shown that Chlorella application research is a very active field, and the future research will be conducted into construction of genetic engineering algae, high-density and low-cost culture systems, efficient harvesting and separation techniques, effective energy conversion, integrated photo-bioreactors, and molecular biology technology. Wastewater treatment, CO2 bio-fixation, biomass production, and biosynthesis of useful substances by cultivating microalgae are promising research fields.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric maps; Biofuels; Chlorella; Citation; High-value application
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-020-2102-0
  14. Pract Radiat Oncol. 2020 Feb 06. pii: S1879-8500(20)30033-3. [Epub ahead of print]
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prro.2020.02.001
  15. Acta Ortop Bras. 2020 Jan-Feb;28(1):28(1): 44-48
       Objective: To provide an analysis of the 50 most cited articles on knee surgery in the Brazilian medical literature.
    Methods: This is a study of systematic review and meta-analysis, level of evidence 3. It was carried out through search in the SCOPUS database to identify scientific articles published in the Brazilian medical literature. Eighty-six Brazilian journals were analyzed, and articles with ten or more citations and which had the word "joelho" or "knee" in the title, abstract or keywords were selected.
    Results: All articles were published as of the year 2000 in 14 journals. The Journal Clinics presented the largest number of publications, followed by Acta Ortopédica Brasileira. The main focus of the studies was on anatomy and biomechanics, mainly from Brazilian authors. Most of the authors were Brazilian, from Brazilian and public research institutions.
    Conclusion: Biometric analysis has been gaining ground in recent years, but its interpretation must consider various aspects related to the paramount analytical importance.
    Keywords:  Data base; Knee; Systematic Review
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1590/1413-785220202801224352
  16. Int J Surg. 2020 Feb 24. pii: S1743-9191(20)30195-3. [Epub ahead of print]
      
    Keywords:  Bladder cancer bibliometrics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijsu.2020.02.032