bims-evares Biomed News
on Evaluation of research
Issue of 2020‒03‒29
twenty-six papers selected by
Thomas Krichel
Open Library Society


  1. Pain Res Manag. 2020 ;2020 5396734
      Background: Researchers are highly interested in the study of nonspecific low back pain (NSLBP). However, few have attempted to collect global data, analyze the emerging trends, and conduct reviews from the perspectives of visualization and bibliometrics.Purpose: We aimed to evaluate research situation and capture subsequent developmental dynamics regarding NSLBP via CiteSpace.
    Methods: Publications on NSLBP in recent 19 years were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). We used CiteSpace to analyze publication outputs, document types, countries, institutions, journals, authors, references, and keywords. Knowledge foundation, hot topics, and future direction were then stated.
    Results: A total of 1099 papers were collected, and the trend of annual publications maintained growth with small fluctuations. Australia (188) and the University of Sydney (76) were the most prolific country and institution, respectively. The Netherlands (0.84) and the University of Sydney (0.47) had the maximum centrality, thus indicating that they have importance in this field. The journal Spine (publication: 87, cocitation counts: 942) ranked first in terms of the volume of publications and cocitation counts. Maher CG (52) who published the most papers and Waddell G (286) who was cited most frequently were the leading authors, thus making strong academic influences. "Motor control exercise" was the largest cluster, which contained most related research articles. 14 references with the strongest citation counts were cited until 2018, thus implying the future development trend. Current hotspots were treatment, meta-analysis, method, and risk factors. Spine, efficacy, adult, and meta-analysis can be regarded as research frontiers.
    Conclusion: This study offers insights into the trend of NSLBP to determine major research countries and institutions, core journals, pivotal authors, overall development tendency, hot topics, and research frontiers. Moreover, it will help researchers extract hidden valuable information for further study.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/5396734
  2. Cancer. 2020 Mar 25.
      BACKGROUND: Investigating scientific publication trends in the field of oncology may highlight opportunities for improved representation, mentorship, collaboration, and advancement for women.METHODS: We conducted a bibliometric analysis of Annals of Surgical Oncology; Cancer; International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics (IJROBP); JAMA Oncology; and Journal of Clinical Oncology in 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2017. Full name and degree credentials per author role (ie, first or senior author), article type, publication year, and citation metrics were collected. First names were used to identify author gender.
    RESULTS: Across 9189 articles, female representation rose between 1990 and 2017 (first authors: 17.7% in 1990, 36.6% in 2017; senior authors: 11.7% in 1990, 28.5% in 2017). For the 50 most cited articles per year, women comprised a smaller percent of first (26.5%) and senior (19.9%) authors. The average citation count was higher for male first (44.8 per article) and senior (47.1) authors compared to female first (39.7) and senior (44.1) authors. With male senior authors, the first author was more likely male (71.4% male; 25.0% female); with female senior authors, first authors were 50.2% male and 47.6% female. IJROBP had the lowest total female representation among first (25.1%) and senior (16.7%) authors. Women had more MDs with Masters degrees, whereas men held more MDs only and more MDs with PhDs.
    CONCLUSION: Despite positive trends, substantial gendered differences in oncology publications persist. Fostering more women in oncology research will benefit female representation at many levels of academia and improve productivity, collaboration, and recruitment, especially in technical fields such as radiation and surgical oncology.
    Keywords:  authorship; bibliometric; gender; oncology; publishing
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.32818
  3. J Pain Res. 2020 ;13 517-526
      Purpose: Labor analgesia is part of the most important tasks an anesthesiologist needs to deal with. With the "two-child policy" in China, the number of parturients has increased significantly, labor analgesia more should be valued. There has been a tremendous change on labor analgesia research in China and around the world; however, broader trends in the prevalence and scope of labor analgesia research remain underexplored. The current study quantitatively analyzes trends in labor analgesia research publications in the past 30 years.Methods: A bibliometric approach was used to search Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure for all labor analgesia-related research articles. The research progress and growing trend were quantitatively analyzed by total publications, research types, research institutions, journal impact factors, and author's contribution. Total citations frequency, average citations per item and h-index were used for evaluating literature quantity.
    Results: From 1988 to 2018, over 8000 documents in labor analgesia research field were published worldwide. According to Scopus, 68.2% papers of all documents were articles. The USA published the largest number of articles (2204, 27.45%). China had published 175 articles (2.18%), ranking the 11th. According to WOS, there were 221 research categories for labor analgesia articles all over the world. The total citations were 76,207, average 9.086 citations per item, and the h-index was 114, average 14 citations per item worldwide. The total citations and h-index of papers published in China were as follows: 353 total citations, 7.06 citations per item, and 10 h-index. High contribution journals, authors, institutions and the top 10 most cited articles on labor analgesia in the world and China were also listed.
    Conclusion: Labor analgesia research has grown markedly during the 1988-2018 period. Although China had made remarkable achievements, there was a gap in the high-quality studies between China and other leading countries.
    Keywords:  China; bibliometric analysis; labor analgesia; trend analysis
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2147/JPR.S232132
  4. World Neurosurg. 2020 Mar 18. pii: S1878-8750(20)30485-X. [Epub ahead of print]
      OBJECTIVES: Despite of common gender disparities in authorship across the vast majority of specialties, the presence of a similar lack of equality in neurosurgery literature is not published yet. Therefore, the authors examined the changes in representation of women among the first and senior (last) authors of original articles in high-impact neurosurgical journals between 2003 and 2018. Ayfer Aslan: Writing - Original Draft, Pelin Kuzucu: Data Curation, Writing - Review & Editing, Burak Karaaslan: Data Curation, Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Writing - Review & Editing, Alp Börcek: Conceptualization, Writing - Review & Editing METHODS: Data about women proportions among the first and senior authors was collected from the issues of Neurosurgery and Journal of Neurosurgery (JNS) published in 2003, 2008, 2013 and 2018.RESULTS: According to the analysis of 3247 original articles, compared with male authors, female authors have published fewer articles as the first (518 of women, 2729 of men) and senior authors (352 of women, 2884 of men). Nonetheless, the proportion of women in the first authorship represented a significant increase from 2003 to 2018 (from 12% to 16.5%, respectively; p<0.01), but not in senior authorship (11.7% in 2003 vs. 10.5% in 2018; p>0.05). Overall, women wrote more research articles than case reports as both first and senior authors (451 and 301 vs. 67 and 51, respectively). In addition, women demonstrated a higher percentage of first authors on female senior author articles (30.4%) than male senior author articles (14.1%).
    CONCLUSION: Although a rising trend in female authorship of neurosurgical literature has been going on through the last two decades, this advancement could not be regarded satisfactory; as the gender gap in authorship is still excessive. Strikingly, female first authors had a tendency of co-authoring with female senior authors.
    Keywords:  Authorship; Journal of Neurosurgery; Neurosurgery; female first authors; female senior authors; women in neurosurgery
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2020.03.017
  5. Front Psychol. 2020 ;11 294
      In order to synthesize the extensively studied place identities and their meanings, this paper reviews how researchers have conceived and deconstructed place identity. CiteSpace, a scientometric tool for visualizing and analyzing trends and patterns in scientific literature, is used to identify the active topics and new developments of publications in place identity. The data set input into CiteSpace consists of 1,011 bibliographic records retrieved from the core database of Web of Science with a title search of the articles published between 1985 and July 2019. The scientometric review reveals the extensive applications of place identity in various topics. Studies in this field experienced an active exploration in plural disciplines after 2000, and the hot area gradually concentrated on the discipline of humanities and social sciences after 2010 and shifted toward place marketing until now. A network of co-cited references identified seven dominant research clusters, of which the research on the influence of place identity on social actors' attitudes and behaviors is most prominent and the research on the effects of physical environment change on place identity captures the latest emerging area. Versatile meanings of place identity are witnessed in different clusters and articles of a cluster. These meanings are intertwined in shaping the knowledge base of thematic concentrations. To supplement the scientometric analysis, a deep survey on measuring methods and roles of place identity in the contents of academic articles was done to trace knowledge connections between different empirical understandings of place identity. Finally, this paper summarizes the meanings of place identity in four dimensions and in turn offers some suggestions for further research directions.
    Keywords:  CiteSpace; meanings; place identity; review; scientometric
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00294
  6. Future Oncol. 2020 Apr;16(10): 597-612
      Aim: Our study aimed to analyze the characteristics of papers published on CAR T-cell in the field of cancer and explore the existing hot topics and prospects. Materials & methods: We explored the global hotspots and future prospects regarding CAR T-cell therapy in cancer research. Papers of CAR T-cell research were retrieved from the Web of Science database. Analysis was performed using VOSviewer, CiteSpace and Excel software. Results: A total number of 1994 papers related to CAR T-cell research of cancer were included. Molecular Therapy published the most papers (n = 85, 4.26%). A total of 9792 authors participated in the publication of all papers. 62 countries and 2065 institutions have participated in the publication of all papers. Conclusion: Research trends are to improve the immunosuppressive microenvironment of cancer, optimize the structure of CAR T-cells and develop 'super CAR T-cell' by using gene-editing technology.
    Keywords:  CAR T-cell; CiteSpace; VOSviewer; bibliometric analysis
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2217/fon-2019-0810
  7. Hum Brain Mapp. 2020 Mar 26.
      Over the past two decades, functional neuroimaging has not only grown into a large field of research, but also substantially evolved. Here we provide a quantitative assessment of these presumed in sample composition and data analysis, using fMRI studies on food/taste research published between 1998 and 2019 as an exemplary case in which the scientific objectives themselves have remained largely stable. A systematic search for papers written in English was done using multiple databases and identified 426 original articles that were subsequently analyzed. The median sample size significantly increased from 11.5 to 35.5 while the ratio of male to female subjects remained stable. There were, however, more papers involving female subjects only, rather than male subjects only, since 2003. There was a decline in uncorrected results and statistical correction by false-discovery rate. Reflecting a trend toward more conservative thresholding, the number of foci reported per paper did not change significantly and sample size (power) did not correlate with the number of reported foci. The median journal impact factor and the normalized number of citations (citations per year) of the papers, in turn, showed a significantly decreasing trend. Number of citations negatively correlated to sample size, publication year but positively correlated to journal impact factor, and was also influenced by statistical correction method. There was a decreasing trend in studies recruiting both left-handed and right-handed subjects. In summary, the present paper quantifies several large-scale trends that have often been anecdotally discussed and reveals the changing nature of neuroimaging studies that may be considered when pursuing meta-analytic approaches.
    Keywords:  bias; fMRI; food; gustation; handedness; neuroimaging; sex; taste
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24957
  8. Mamm Biol. 2019 ;98(1): 163-172
      In this century, China has sustained unparalleled economic development, leading to exponentially growing investments in scientific research. Yet, the demand for research-funding is large and tracing the current knowledge is a key step to define priority research topics. In this same span, studies on bats in China have uncovered an overlooked diversity and revealed novelties in bats' evolutionary history and life-history aspects. All this 21st-century knowledge, however, is scattered and a large part is concealed from most of the international scientific community in Mandarin-language articles. Here, we summarize the post-millennium (2000-2017) research on bats in China and point out trends and future directions based on neglected topics, groups, and regions. In addition, we provide an up-to-date list of bat species in China. We retrieved 594 publications related to bats in China, nearly half were written in Mandarin. At least 147 bat species are present in China, which places it among the most bat-rich countries in the world. There was a significant positive trend on the number of publications, from 12.5 annual average in 2000-2005 to 46.5 in recent years, reflecting the Chinese economic-scientific development in this century. We found marked taxonomic and spatial biases. Half of the studies in this century focused on Rhinolophus, Myotis, and Hipposideros, and the southern and eastern provinces were the most studied. Systematic/taxonomy and Ecology were the predominant topics post-millennium, whereas only 10 articles have clear conservation-driven goals. Our review shows that the majority of studies were focused on the least concern, cave-dweller species, and on bat-rich provinces. Future projects should address the effects of human-modified landscapes on bat community to define proper conservation actions. We discuss some priority actions and projects that will help to enhance bat protection in China.
    Keywords:  Asia; Bat diversity; Chiroptera; Conservation gap; Research bias
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mambio.2019.09.002
  9. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Mar 23. pii: E2127. [Epub ahead of print]17(6):
      Quality of life (QOL) has been considered as an important outcome indicator in holistic care for HIV-infected people, especially as HIV/AIDS transforms from a fatal illness to a chronic condition. This study aimed to identify trends and emerging topics among research concerning the QOL of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). The analyzed data were English papers published from 1996 to 2017, searched and extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection. Collaborations between countries and the correlation between the keywords were visualized by VOSviewer while the abstracts' content was analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and Jaccard's' similarity index. There has been an increase in both the number of publications and citations. The United Nations of America leads in terms of paper volume. The cross-nation collaborations are mainly regional. Despite a rather comprehensive coverage of topics relating to QOL in PLWHA, there has evidently been a lack of studies focusing on socio-cultural factors and their impacts on the QOL of those who are HIV-infected. Further studies should consider investigating the role of socio-cultural factors, especially where long-term treatment is involved. Policy-level decisions are recommended to be made based on the consideration of cultural factors, while collaborations between developed and developing nations, in particular in HIV/AIDS-ridden countries, are strongly recommended.
    Keywords:  HIV/AIDS; bibliometric; quality of life; scientometrics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17062127
  10. Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2020 Mar 25.
      As an important indicator of greenhouse gas emissions, the carbon footprint (CF) has become increasingly important in recent years under the dual pressures of global warming and international commitments to mitigate its effects. This study collected 3698 papers related to CF from the Web of Science database as research samples (year 2007 to 2018). Based on CiteSpace, the knowledge base, popular topics, and research trends of CF are presented. The results show the following: (1) from 2007 to 2018, the number of articles on CF have steadily increased. (2) After spatial analysis of the literature, we found that among research institutions, the Chinese Academy of Sciences has the largest number of publications on the issue. When it comes to country, three important research forces can be identified: USA, China, and UK. (3) Research on the CF is interdisciplinary; in addition to the traditional fields of environmental, political, economics, and computing, CF research has received attention from the Physics, Materials, Chemistry, Mathematics, and animal sciences. (4) Through keyword clustering, currently popular topics in research can be roughly divided into four aspects: CF calculation methods, research scales, energy, and agriculture. (5) The CF research during the study period is divided into four stages according to the burst time and content of the burst keywords. According to the research status and trend, this paper puts forward the future research direction of carbon footprint.
    Keywords:  Carbon footprint; CiteSpace; Knowledge base; Literature mining; Literature review; Research hotspot
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-08158-9
  11. Heliyon. 2020 Mar;6(3): e03575
      Objective: The aim of this contribution is to determine what variables influence the position, by quartiles of the impact factor, as a quality indicator of a journal in the field of Dentistry.Methods: To this end, 24 journals included in Journal Citation Reports, 6 pertaining to each quartile were selected by a stratified sampling and then an ordinal regression model was estimated stepwise considering the journal impact factor quartile as response variable.
    Results: The estimation procedure concluded that the average number of papers published yearly by a journal and the percentage of systematic reviews are the most significant variables to be considered, along with the factor representing the journal's degree of adherence to recommendations by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.
    Conclusions/Clinical significance: Systematic reviews have significant effect on the Journal Impact Factor position of a journal as well as adherence to ICMJE recommendations, while papers publishing clinical trials bear no influence on this factor. Greater yearly average of published papers in a journal means a higher impact factor.
    Keywords:  Applied computing; Dentistry; Education; Information science; Journal impact factor; Ordinal regression model; Statistics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03575
  12. JAMA Ophthalmol. 2020 Mar 26.
      Importance: Because women remain underrepresented in leadership positions in medicine, including ophthalmology, knowledge of sex composition of ophthalmic journal editorial and professional society boards seems warranted.Objectives: To investigate the sex composition of ophthalmic journal editorial and professional society boards and compare the publication productivity and number of citations of male vs female board members.
    Design, Setting, and Participants: In this cross-sectional study, the SCImago Journal Rank indicator was used to identify the 20 highest-ranked ophthalmology journals. Faculty members from each ophthalmic subspecialty were surveyed within a US academic ophthalmology department to identify 15 influential ophthalmology societies. The 2018 board members of each journal and society were identified from the journals' and societies' official websites, and the sex of each individual was recorded. Information regarding journals and societies was collected from October 1 to December 31, 2018. The Scopus database was accessed in January 2019 and then used to find each member's h-index and m-quotient.
    Main Outcomes and Measures: The h-index, defined as the highest number of an author's publications that received at least h number of citations, was calculated for each board member. The m-quotient, which accounts for varying lengths of academic careers, was calculated by dividing the h-index by the number of years since first publication.
    Results: Of the 1077 members of ophthalmic journal editorial and society leadership boards, 797 (74.0%) were men and 280 (26.0%) were women. Among the 24 editors in chief of the 20 journals investigated, 23 (95.8%) were male. Thirteen of the 15 professional society presidents (86.7%) were men. Male board members had significantly higher median h-indexes (male vs female journals: 34 [interquartile range {IQR}, 23-47] vs 28 [IQR, 19-40], P < .001; male vs female societies: 27 [IQR, 15-41] vs 17 [IQR, 8-32], P = .006), median publication numbers (male vs female journal board members: 157 [IQR, 88-254] vs 109 [IQR, 66-188], P < .001; male vs female society board members: 109 [IQR, 57-190] vs 58 [IQR, 28-139, P = .001), and median citations (male vs female journal board members: 4027 [IQR, 1897-8005] vs 2871 [IQR, 1344-5852], P < .001; male vs female society board members: 2228 [IQR, 1005-5069] vs 1090 [IQR, 410-2527], P = .003). However, the median m-quotients for male and female board members were comparable (male vs female journal board members: 1.2 [IQR, 0.8-1.6] vs 1.1 [IQR, 0.8-1.5], P = .54; male vs female society board members: 1.0 [IQR, 0.7-1.4] vs 0.9 [IQR, 0.6-1.3], P = .32).
    Conclusions and Relevance: The findings suggest that the sex composition on journal editorial and professional society boards in ophthalmology is consistent with the sex composition of ophthalmologists in the US, as reported by the Association of American Colleges, but that editor in chief and society president positions are male dominated despite the apparent equality in academic productivity.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2020.0164
  13. Plast Reconstr Surg. 2020 Mar 19.
      BACKGROUND: Presentation of research at scientific conferences provides an opportunity for researchers to disseminate their work and gain peer-feedback. However, much of the presented work is never published in peer-reviewed journals. We aimed to analyze the conversion rate of abstracts presented at three national plastic surgery meetings.METHODS: Abstracts presented at the American Association of Plastic Surgeons(AAPS), American Society of Plastic Surgeons(ASPS), and Plastic Surgery Research Council(PSRC) annual meetings in 2014 and 2015 were identified to analyze the rates of successful conversion into full-text publications. Meeting administrators were contacted to obtain the respective acceptance rates of submitted abstracts.
    RESULTS: A total of 1174 abstracts were analyzed. The overall conversion rate was 65%. AAPS was the meeting with the highest conversion rate(73%) followed by PSRC(66%) and ASPS(61%). Conversely, AAPS had a lower acceptance rate(28%) compared to ASPS(42%) and PSRC(49%). The conversion rate was significantly higher for abstracts from native English-speaking countries while no significant differences were noted between oral and poster presentations. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery(PRS) was the journal with the highest percentage of published manuscripts(34%). Abstracts presented at PSRC had the highest mean impact factor for the journal of publication. First authors changed in 31% and last authors in 18% of publications. The overall median time to publication from the date of presentation was 13 months.
    CONCLUSION: Almost two-thirds of abstracts presented at AAPS, ASPS, and PSRC successfully converted into full-text publications. Plastic surgery departments/divisions should follow unpublished work in their institutions to benefit both patients and the scientific community.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1097/PRS.0000000000006849
  14. Animals (Basel). 2020 Mar 24. pii: E540. [Epub ahead of print]10(3):
      Farm animal welfare in the People's Republic of China (henceforth, China) is not well represented in the international scientific literature. This may lead researchers, advocates and those with agricultural partnerships in China to assume that animal welfare is not a field of interest there. This study reports a literature review of published pig and poultry welfare research in China using Chinese scientific databases. We aimed to determine which areas of welfare research have recently received academic attention in China. From an understanding of areas being studied, current and emerging priority areas for research could be determined. This study identified 854 academic publications citing pig or chicken welfare in China published between 2008 and 2018. Within these publications, two broader areas of significant attention were addressed in the context of animal welfare; yield and product quality, such as feeding, biosecurity and antimicrobial resistance, including immunity and second, the relationship of animal welfare with the Chinese philosophy of 'ecological agriculture.' Holistic systems were advocated to maximize sustainability and maintain a healthy environment, such as the creation of fermented bedding for pigs. Environmental enrichment was also a focus of attention, demonstrating an interest in animals' mental welfare, which was usually conjectured from their behavior. Few of the articles were translated into English or other languages and therefore most were largely unavailable to the English-speaking global scientific community. This presents an opportunity to provide relevant animal welfare knowledge, which could improve animal welfare globally. China is a global animal trade leader and the home of the largest agricultural industries in the world. An increase in collaboration on animal welfare research and understanding of the advancements that have been made in China, as reviewed in this manuscript, could advance farm animal welfare from a global perspective.
    Keywords:  Asia; China; animal welfare; bibliometric review; livestock production; pigs; poultry; science
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/ani10030540
  15. Cancer. 2020 Mar 25.
      
    Keywords:  gap; gender balance; gender bias; gender equity; scientific publications; women in medicine
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1002/cncr.32819
  16. Sci Context. 2019 Dec;32(4): 411-430
      Following an international trend, Italy has reformed its university system, especially concerning methods and tools for research evaluation, which are increasingly focused on a number of bibliometric indexes. To study the effects of these changes, we analyze the changing profiles of economists who have won competitions for full professorship in the last few decades in the country. We concentrate on individual characteristics and on scientific production. We show that the identification of a univocal and standardized concept of "research quality" within the new research assessments has progressively imposed a strategy of "homologation," especially for women. We find that women economists are at a higher risk of discrimination than their male colleagues and thus they are more likely to conform their research activities to the standardized profile imposed by the gender-blind application of simplistic bibliometric methods.
    Keywords:  bibliometrics; glass ceiling; homologation; research quality; women economists
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889720000046
  17. Inj Epidemiol. 2020 Mar 23. 7(1): 9
      BACKGROUND: We aimed to evaluate the variation in gun violence-related research in the US over time to determine if there are meaningful changes in frequency of research at certain time points. Related publications were searched from the Web of Science.METHODS: We searched articles from Web of Science to collect publication data of gun violence research in three disciplines (clinical sciences, life sciences, and social behavior sciences) from 1981 to 2018. The joinpoint regression approach was applied to evaluate the trend of publication ratio. We also adopted the generalized additive mixed model to compare the publication ratio among the three research disciplines.
    RESULTS: During the study period, each research discipline had a significant decrease in publication ratios, especially social behavioral sciences from 2001 to 2011, with an annual percentage change = - 9.77% (95% CI = - 13.45, - 5.93; p-value < .0001). After combining the three research disciplines, the average change of the publication ratio was significantly increased 9.18% (95% CI = 6.42, 12.01; p-value < .0001) per year from 1981 to 2018. Compared to social behavioral sciences, both clinical sciences and life sciences had a significantly smaller publication ratio.
    CONCLUSIONS: Gun violence research exhibited a significant downward trend in publications in the early 2000s, which may be attributed at least in part to limited federal funding, but the publication ratio increased since the 2010s. To enhance the amount of peer-reviewed gun violence research so that research-informed gun violence interventions are more likely to succeed, decision-makers should keep supporting quality research.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; Gun violence; Injury; Trend
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s40621-020-0235-6
  18. Heliyon. 2020 Mar;6(3): e03542
      Background: Research is an important undergraduate competence for physicians. However, few studies have assessed the scientific production of medical students in Latin-America. Thus, this study had the objective to assess the rate and characteristics of research publications by undergraduate medical students in 2016, in Lima, Peru.Methods: This cross-sectional study included all the students of the eight medical schools in Lima (Peru). The medical students included were collected from the registry of the National Medical Examination (taken during their last year of undergraduate studies) in 2016. To evaluate their research publications, systematic searches were performed in Google Scholar and PubMed during August 2018.
    Results: We studied data from 1241 medical students (54.2% females) from eight medical schools. 173 (13.9%) students published at least one paper, 102 (8.2%) published at least one original paper, and 30 (2.4%) published at least one original paper in PubMed-Indexed journals. We registered a total of 174 papers authored by medical students, of which 98 (56.3%) were published in Peruvian journals, 128 (73.6%) were published in Spanish, 90 (51.7%) had a medical student as the first author, and 43 (24.7%) had a medical student as the corresponding author. The percentage of students with at least one publication was very heterogeneous across the eight medical schools evaluated (63.6%, 21.4%, 16.8%, 15.1%, 8.2%, 2.0%, 1.9%, and 0.0%).
    Conclusion: Among medical students in Lima, one out of seven had published at least one paper, one out of 12 had published at least one original paper, and one out of 40 had published at least one original paper in PubMed-Indexed journals. Scientific production was very heterogeneous across medical schools.
    Keywords:  Medical; Medical Education; Social science
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e03542
  19. Sci Context. 2019 Dec;32(4): 381-410
      This paper argues that the economics discipline is highly concentrated, which may inhibit scientific innovation and change in the future. The argument is based on an empirical investigation of six dimensions of concentration in economics between 1956 and 2016 using a large-scale data set. The results show that North America accounts for nearly half of all articles and three quarters of all citations. Twenty institutions reap a share of 42 percent of citations, five journals a share of 28.5 percent, and 100 authors a share of 15.5 percent. A total of 2.8 percent of citations may be attributed to heterodox schools of thought. Also top articles are concentrated along these dimensions. Overall, concentration has strongly increased over the last six decades.
    Keywords:  bibliometrics; citations; concentration; economics; inequality; scientometrics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889720000034
  20. R Soc Open Sci. 2020 Jan;7(1): 190207
      Citation networks of scientific publications offer fundamental insights into the structure and development of scientific knowledge. We propose a new measure, called intermediacy, for tracing the historical development of scientific knowledge. Given two publications, an older and a more recent one, intermediacy identifies publications that seem to play a major role in the historical development from the older to the more recent publication. The identified publications are important in connecting the older and the more recent publication in the citation network. After providing a formal definition of intermediacy, we study its mathematical properties. We then present two empirical case studies, one tracing historical developments at the interface between the community detection literature and the scientometric literature and one examining the development of the literature on peer review. We show both conceptually and empirically how intermediacy differs from main path analysis, which is the most popular approach for tracing historical developments in citation networks. Main path analysis tends to favour longer paths over shorter ones, whereas intermediacy has the opposite tendency. Compared to the main path analysis, we conclude that intermediacy offers a more principled approach for tracing the historical development of scientific knowledge.
    Keywords:  citation network; intermediacy; main path analysis; publication
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.190207
  21. CJEM. 2020 Mar 26. 1-7
      OBJECTIVES: Conferences are designed for knowledge translation, but traditional conference evaluations are inadequate. We lack studies that explore alternative metrics to traditional evaluation metrics. We sought to determine how traditional evaluation metrics and Twitter metrics performed using data from a conference of the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians (CAEP).METHODS: This study used a retrospective design to compare social media posts and tradition evaluations related to an annual specialty conference. A post ("tweet") on the social media platform Twitter was included if it associated with a session. We differentiated original and discussion tweets from retweets. We weighted the numbers of tweets and retweets to comprise a novel Twitter Discussion Index. We extracted the speaker score from the conference evaluation. We performed descriptive statistics and correlation analyses.
    RESULTS: Of a total of 3,804 tweets, 2,218 (58.3%) were session-specific. Forty-eight percent (48%) of all sessions received tweets (mean = 11.7 tweets; 95% CI of 0 to 57.5; range, 0-401), with a median Twitter Discussion Index score of 8 (interquartile range, 0 to 27). In the 111 standard presentations, 85 had traditional evaluation metrics and 71 received tweets (p > 0.05), while 57 received both. Twenty (20 of 71; 28%) moderated posters and 44% (40 of 92) posters or oral abstracts received tweets without traditional evaluation metrics. We found no significant correlation between Twitter Discussion Index and traditional evaluation metrics (R = 0.087).
    CONCLUSIONS: We found no correlation between traditional evaluation metrics and Twitter metrics. However, in many sessions with and without traditional evaluation metrics, audience created real-time tweets to disseminate knowledge. Future conference organizers could use Twitter metrics as a complement to traditional evaluation metrics to evaluate knowledge translation and dissemination.
    Keywords:  Education; knowledge translation; social media
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1017/cem.2020.15
  22. J Pediatr Ophthalmol Strabismus. 2020 Mar 01. 57(2): 78-84
      PURPOSE: To evaluate trends in the representation of pediatric-related articles in leading general ophthalmology journals for 20 years.METHODS: A list of all relevant publications from five top-ranking general ophthalmology journals (Ophthalmology, JAMA Ophthalmology, American Journal of Ophthalmology, British Journal of Ophthalmology, and Acta Ophthalmologica) between January 1997 and December 2016 was retrieved using the PubMed search engine. Articles captured by the age filter "child: birth-18 years" were considered pediatric. The annual pediatric publication rate was calculated as the fraction of pediatric articles out of the total number of articles within each year for every journal. A linear mixed effects model was applied to determine the trend in the pediatric publication rate during the study period.
    RESULTS: A total of 37,181 publications were included in the analysis, of which 7,828 (21.1%) were classified as "pediatric." During the study period, there was a statistically significant decrease in pediatric publication rates, with an annual absolute decrease of 0.23% (P = .01), yielding relative reduction by approximately 18% over the past two decades.
    CONCLUSIONS: Representation of pediatric articles progressively decreased in general ophthalmology journals. This trend has major implications regarding exposure of non-pediatric ophthalmologists to the new developments in pediatric management. In addition, this may imply a difficulty to publish pediatric-related articles in high-ranking general ophthalmology journals. [J Pediatr Ophthalmol Strabismus. 2020;57(2):78-84.].
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3928/01913913-20200131-01
  23. Zhonghua Nan Ke Xue. 2018 Nov;24(11): 1029-1035
      Objective: To survey the current status of clinical studies on patent Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for idiopathic male infertility in China.METHODS: Using the keywords "oligospermia", "azoospermia", "asthenozoospermia", "infertility" and "sperm", we searched China National Knowledge Internet (CNKI), Wanfang Database and SinoMed for randomized clinical trials (RCT), cohort studies, case-control studies and case series studies focusing on the treatment of male idiopathic infertility using TCM from January 2001 to May 2017. Two individual reviewers screened the literature, extracted the information separately, recorded the titles, authors, related institutions and regions, journals and years of publication, medication studied, and outcomes. The collected data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel and SPSS.
    RESULTS: Totally, 307 publications were included in this study, including 243 RCTs (79%), 57 case series studies (19%) and 7 retrospective cohort studies (2%). Fifty one patent TCM and in 146 journals were involved. The number of publications gradully increased from 2001 to 2017. The authors were from 243 institutions in 29 provinces, independent municipalities or autonomous regions, mostly in Guangdong, Guangxi, Henan, Beijing and Jiangsu. Majority of the studies focused on the evaluation of the efficacy and safety of the drugs, among which the most studied medication Wuziyanzong Pills (114/307, 37.13%), Fufangxuanju Capsules, Shengjing Capsules, Huangjingzanyu Capsules, and Liuweidihuang Pills. Chinese Journal of Andrology had the highest number of publications.
    CONCLUSIONS: A rapid progress has been achieved in China in the studies of patent TCM for the treatment of male infertility. However, limitatiors stiu exist, ragarding inbalance among regions, low sample sizes, low quality of studies, poor involvement of phamacisis.
    Keywords:   bibliometrics ; male infertility; patent traditional Chinese medicine
  24. Acta Inform Med. 2020 Mar;28(1): 4-11
      Introduction: Results of preclinical and clinical studies in medicine could be trusted only if their design and statistical analysis were appropriate.Aim: The aim of our study was to investigate whether preclinical and clinical studies published in medical journals of Bosnia and Herzegovina satisfy basic requirements for appropriate design and statistical interpretation of data.
    Methods: Preclinical and clinical studies published in medical journals of Bosnia and Herzegovina were retrieved from the PubMed database, and the sample for analysis was randomly chosen from the retrieved publications. Implementation rate of basic principles of experimental design (local control, randomization and replication) and rate of the most common errors in design of clinical/observational studies was established by careful reading of the sampled publications and their checking against predefined criteria.
    Results: Our study showed that only a minority of experimental preclinical studies had basic principles of design completely implemented (7%), while implementation rate of single aspects of appropriate experimental design varied from as low as 12% to as high as 77%. Only one of the clinical/observational studies had none of the errors searched for (2%), and specific errors rates varied from 10% to 89%. Average impact factor of the surveyed studies was around one, and average publication date recent, less than 5 years ago.
    Conclusion: Prevalence of preclinical studies that did not follow completely basic principles of research design, and that of clinical/observational studies with errors are high, raising suspicion to validity of their results. If incorrect and not protected against bias, results of published studies may adversely influence future research.
    Keywords:  bias; control experiments; errors; internal validity; randomization; replication
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.5455/aim.2020.28.4-11
  25. Sci Context. 2019 Dec;32(4): 361-380
      In this paper we comparatively explore three claims concerning the disciplinary character of economics by means of citation analysis. The three claims under study are: (1) economics exhibits strong forms of institutional stratification and, as a byproduct, a rather pronounced internal hierarchy; (2) economists strongly conform to institutional incentives; and (3) modern mainstream economics is a largely self-referential intellectual project mostly inaccessible to disciplinary or paradigmatic outsiders. The validity of these claims is assessed by means of an interdisciplinary comparison of citation patterns aiming to identify peculiar characteristics of economic discourse. In doing so, we emphasize that citation data can always be interpreted in different ways, thereby focusing on the contrast between a "cognitive" and an "evaluative" approach towards citation data.
    Keywords:  A10; A12; A14; citation patterns; economics; interdisciplinary; scientometrics; sociology of economics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1017/S0269889720000022
  26. Res Pract Thromb Haemost. 2020 Mar;4(3): 353-356
      
    Keywords:  Internet; bibliometrics; information dissemination; scholarly communication
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1002/rth2.12322