bims-evares Biomed News
on Evaluation of research
Issue of 2021–03–14
fifty-one papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society



  1. Radiologia. 2021 Mar 04. pii: S0033-8338(21)00049-7. [Epub ahead of print]
       BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Bibliometrics makes it possible to measure the relative importance of a scientific journal in its field. The current study analyzed the scientific publications in Radiología and the bibliometric parameters of the journal in the period comprising 2010 through 2019.
    MATERIALS AND METHODS: We reviewed the bibliometrics for Radiología through information obtained from three sources: Scopus, the online version of the journal, and the publisher (Elsevier). We retrospectively analyzed aspects related to the editorial process (final decision and speed), the articles published (type, subspecialty of radiology, and imaging technique), the trends in citation and various indices (CiteScore, SNIP, and SJR), visibility, downloads, author characteristics (geographical origin and institutional collaboration), and the most cited articles.
    RESULTS: The number of articles published in Radiología gradually decreased during the decade, and the time to publication increased. Original research articles account for the largest share of the articles published. The most common subject areas were radiology of the digestive tract and neuroradiology. Nevertheless, the bibliometric indicators and the number of downloads of articles increased every year. Regarding the authorship of the articles published, although authors from Spain predominate, the participation of authors from other countries became increasingly common. Collaboration among different institutions also became increasingly common in the period analyzed.
    CONCLUSIONS: This review shows the progression of the journal's scientific work and some aspects that must be addressed to favor the growth of Radiología.
    Keywords:  Bibliometrics; Bibliometría; Investigación; Journalism; Peer Review; Periodismo; Radiology; Radiología; Research; Revisión por pares
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rx.2021.02.002
  2. Clin Exp Optom. 2021 Feb 27. 1-5
      Clinical relevance: The scientific foundations for clinical contact lens practice are rooted in the ophthalmic literature. This analysis of contact lens papers celebrates contemporary research achievements in the contact lens field.Background: This work aims to assemble contact lens-related publication metrics so as to identify the most impactful papers published so far this century, as well the top countries, authors, institutions and journals.Methods: A search was undertaken of the titles of papers on the Scopus database to identify contact lens-related articles published this century. The ten most highly cited papers were determined from the total list of 4,164 papers found. Rank-order lists by count were assembled for the 'top 25' in each of four categories: authors, institutions, countries and journals. A 20-year subject-specific contact lens h-index (hCL-20-index) was derived for each author, institution, country and journal to serve as a measure of impact in the field. The top 10 constituents (of the top 25) of each category were ranked by hCL-20-index and tabulated for consideration.Results: The most highly cited paper this century is entitled 'Soft contact lens polymers: An evolution', by Nicholson and Vogt. Lyndon Jones is the most impactful author, with a hCL-20-index of 32. The University of New South Wales (Australia) produces the most impactful contact lens-related papers, and the United States is the most highly-ranked country. Optometry and Vision Science is the most impactful journal in the contact lens field.Conclusions: Contact lens materials and lens-associated keratitis are topics of high interest in the contemporary contact lens literature, with an emerging interest in orthokeratology for myopia control and glucose monitoring. Impactful 21st century authors, institutions, countries and journals are identified. Optometry is revealed as the leading profession in relation to the publication of impactful contact lens-related papers.
    Keywords:  21st century; Bibliometric analysis; citations; contact lenses; publication metrics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/08164622.2021.1880867
  3. J Med Internet Res. 2021 Mar 08. 23(3): e24870
       BACKGROUND: Social media platforms provide an easily accessible and time-saving communication approach for individuals with mental disorders compared to face-to-face meetings with medical providers. Recently, machine learning (ML)-based mental health exploration using large-scale social media data has attracted significant attention.
    OBJECTIVE: We aimed to provide a bibliometric analysis and discussion on research trends of ML for mental health in social media.
    METHODS: Publications addressing social media and ML in the field of mental health were retrieved from the Scopus and Web of Science databases. We analyzed the publication distribution to measure productivity on sources, countries, institutions, authors, and research subjects, and visualized the trends in this field using a keyword co-occurrence network. The research methodologies of previous studies with high citations are also thoroughly described.
    RESULTS: We obtained a total of 565 relevant papers published from 2015 to 2020. In the last 5 years, the number of publications has demonstrated continuous growth with Lecture Notes in Computer Science and Journal of Medical Internet Research as the two most productive sources based on Scopus and Web of Science records. In addition, notable methodological approaches with data resources presented in high-ranking publications were investigated.
    CONCLUSIONS: The results of this study highlight continuous growth in this research area. Moreover, we retrieved three main discussion points from a comprehensive overview of highly cited publications that provide new in-depth directions for both researchers and practitioners.
    Keywords:  bibliometric analysis; machine learning; mental health; social media
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2196/24870
  4. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2021 Mar 09. 1-6
      Background: In the last two decades the world has experienced many outbreaks of infectious diseases including the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. COVID-19 was first reported in China and spread to more than 200 countries and territories. At present, there are no available treatment and vaccines for COVID-19. This study aimed to evaluate the global research trends in COVID-19 vaccine.Methods: On January 12, 2020, a comprehensive search of documents on COVID-19 was conducted in the Web of Science Core Collection database. HistCiteTM and VOSviewer softwares are used for citations and visualization mapping.Results: A total of 916 documents authored by 4,392 authors and published in 376 journals were included in the final analysis. Majority of the retrieved documents consisted of articles (n = 372, 40.6%). The most prolific authors were Dhama K (n = 10, 1.1%) and Hotez PJ (n = 10, 1.1%). The most active institution was the University of Oxford (n = 24, 2.6%). The leading journal in COVID-19 vaccine was Human Vaccine & Immunotherapeutics (n = 43, 4.7%). The most frequently used keywords were COVID (n = 597, 65.2%), and vaccine (n = 521, 56.9%). Furthermore, visualization mapping shows that COVID-19 was the most co-occurrence author keyword. The United States of America (USA) was the most productive country, 352 (38.4%).Conclusions: This is the first bibliometric study that provides detailed information about published literature on the COVID-19 vaccine. Majority of the publications were published in developed countries. The findings may useful for researchers and policymakers.
    Keywords:  COVID-19; HistCiteTM; VOSviewer; bibliometric analysis; vaccine
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/21645515.2021.1886806
  5. Neural Plast. 2021 ;2021 6634644
       Background: The prevalence of comorbid pain after spinal cord injury (SCI) is relatively high in clinical observations and has continued to increase over time. Neuropathic pain (70.14%) is the most popular subject in academic journals after SCI. However, studies that used the bibliometric method to analyze comorbid pain after SCI are still lacking. This study is aimed at combining and integrating acquired information to analyze the global trends of research on the comorbidity of pain after SCI in the last three decades (1990-2019).
    Methods: Systematic works of literature published from 1990 to 2019 were obtained from the Web of Science Core Collection. CiteSpace software was used to analyze the relationship of publication year with the country, institution, journals, authors, references, and keywords. The regression analysis is used to evaluate the percentage of the category increase or decrease over time significantly. IBM SPSS Statistics was used in the statistical analysis.
    Results: A total of 730 publications were included in the analysis. A remarkable increase in the number of publications was observed in the study period (P < 0.05). A total of 202 academic journals focused on the categories of clinical neurology, neurosciences, and rehabilitation, and the annual growth rate of articles in these three categories was statistically significant (P < 0.05). The USA (356, 48.77%) and the University of Miami (64, 8.77%) were the country and institution with the highest number of publications, respectively. Spinal Cord, which was the main journal for research on pain after SCI, had the most publications (88, 12.05%). Burst keywords showed that the individual, inflammation, and central sensitization with pain after SCI are the research development trends and focus in this research field.
    Conclusions: Overall, this study provides the latest research direction for pain after SCI. This historical overview of research into pain after SCI will be a useful basis for further research into development trends, focus issues, cooperators, and cooperative institutions.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/6634644
  6. J Pain Res. 2021 ;14 561-573
       Objective: We aimed to explore the hotspots and frontiers of systematic review/meta-analysis on acupuncture therapy according to bibliometric methods.
    Methods: Systematic review/meta-analysis articles on acupuncture therapy were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. We used CiteSpace 5.6.R5 to analyze annual publication, categories, countries, institutions, journals, authors, cited references, and keywords through visual maps to explore the research hotspots and trends.
    Results: An analysis of 1189 articles in English showed that the total number of publications continually increased in the last 12 years. General medicine was the most used category, and the country and institution ranking highest in this field were China and Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, respectively. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine was the most prolific journal, and Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews was the most cited journal. Myeong Soo Lee was the most productive author, and J.P.T. Higgins ranked first in frequency among the cited authors. In the cited references, the top two were Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions and the Standards for Reporting Interventions in Clinical Trials of Acupuncture (STRICTA). As for keywords, there were 6 main frontiers including interventions, disease, patient, comparisons, study types, and outcomes. The first disease was pain, while the intervention was electroacupuncture (EA).
    Conclusion: The present study examined the research trends in systematic reviews and meta-analysis on acupuncture therapy through bibliometric methods and revealed potential future hotspots of research in this field.
    Keywords:  CiteSpace; acupuncture; bibliometric analysis; meta-analysis; systematic review
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2147/JPR.S290516
  7. J Med Internet Res. 2021 Mar 11.
       BACKGROUND: Medical journals increasingly promote published content through social media platforms such as Twitter. However, gastroenterology (GI) journals still rank below average in social media engagement.
    OBJECTIVE: We aimed to determine the engagement patterns of publications in GI journals on Twitter and evaluate the impact of tweets on citations.
    METHODS: This was a retrospective cohort study comparing the 3-year citations of all full-length articles published in five major GI journals in 1/1/2012-12/31/2012 tweeted by the official journal account with those that were not. Multivariable analysis using linear regression was performed to control for journal impact factor, time since publication, article type, frequency of re-posting by other users ("re-tweets"), and media addition to tweets. Secondary analyses were performed to assess the associations between article type or subtopic and likelihood of social media promotion/engagement.
    RESULTS: 1666 articles were reviewed, with 477 tweeted by the official journal account. Tweeting an article independently predicted increased citations after controlling for potential confounders (β-coefficient=13.09;p=0.007). There was significant association between article type and number of re-tweets on ANOVA (p<0.0001), with guidelines/technical reviews (mean difference: 1.04, CI 0.22-1.87;p<0.05) and meta-analyses/systemic reviews (mean difference: 1.03, CI 0.35-1.70;p<0.05) being re-tweeted more than basic science. Manuscript subtopics most frequently promoted include motility/functional bowel disease (OR=3.84; CI: 1.93-7.64;p=0.0001) and education (OR=4.69; CI: 1.62-13.58;p=0.0044) while basic science papers were less likely tweeted (OR=0.154; CI: 0.07-0.34;p<0.0001).
    CONCLUSIONS: Tweeting of GI journal articles independently predicted higher 3-year citations. Wider adoption of social media to increase reach and measure uptake of published research should be considered.
    CLINICALTRIAL:
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2196/25252
  8. Reumatismo. 2021 Jan 18. 72(4): 218-227
      Ankylosing spondylitis is a global health problem. There are continuous innovations in terms of etiopathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment. Here, the top 100 most cited articles on ankylosing spondylitis during the last three decades are analyzed. On April 6, 2020, the Web of Science was screened from 1984 to 2020 using the terms ankylosing spondylitis; the top 100 most cited articles were identified. For bibliometric analysis, the name of the article, year of publication, author information, number of citations, name of the publishing journal, H-index, impact factor, countries of the authors, types of articles, and funding sources were recorded. The Altmetric attention was recorded using a program that automatically calculates the score. The total number of citations of the articles in the list ranged from 176 to 3700. Arthritis and Rheumatism (n=31) and Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (n=27) were the two leading journals in which the majority of the articles were published. Germany produced most of the articles; Braun J was the most cited author. Randomized controlled clinical trials were found to constitute most of the articles (n=35). According to the citation number, studies evaluating classification criteria and disease activity indices and, according to the Altmetric Attention Score, studies addressing the prevalence and biological agents were prominent. We present a perspective on the extent to which the most cited articles on ankylosing spondylitis draw interest in the scientific community and on social media platforms.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.4081/reumatismo.2020.1325
  9. J Neurol Surg A Cent Eur Neurosurg. 2021 Mar 09.
       BACKGROUND:  To date, no study has used bibliometric analysis to review the most influential articles in lumbar spinal stenosis. The objective of this study was to identify and analyze the characteristics and the level of evidence of the 100 most cited articles on lumbar spinal stenosis METHODS:  The Thomson Reuters Web of Science was accessed to find the 100 most cited articles on lumbar spinal stenosis. For each article, we recorded the number and density of citations, authors, country, journals and years, department, level of evidence, type of study, and if it was part of any multicenter studies.
    RESULTS:  Until January 2017, the 100 most cited articles accumulated 11,136 citations (average: 259.05/y), ranging individually between 442 and 50 (average: 111.36). The first reference was published in 1974 in Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research. Therapeutic studies (n = 40), the 1990s (n = 46), United States as country of origin (n = 51), Harvard University as institution (n = 16), Katz JN as author (n = 10), and Spine as journal (n = 48) have the hegemony. Many were multicenter (n = 42) and using level 2 evidence (n = 49). There is an inverse relationship between citation index and long-standing studies, maintenance of those most cited, and a temporary advance toward better levels of evidence.
    CONCLUSION:  This bibliometric analysis reveals a good level of evidence in the published clinical series and includes 100 articles useful for the approach of lumbar spinal stenosis.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0040-1720993
  10. Front Oncol. 2021 ;11 629687
       Introduction: Melanoma is a severe skin cancer that metastasizes quickly. Bibliometric analysis can quantify hotspots of research interest. Google Trends can provide information to address public concerns.
    Methods: The top 15 most frequently cited articles on melanoma each year from 2015 to 2019, according to annual citations, were retrieved from the Web of Science database. Original articles, reviews, and research letters were included in this research. For the Google Trends analysis, the topic "Melanoma" was selected as the keyword. Online search data from 2004 to 2019 were collected. Four countries (New Zealand, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom) were selected for seasonal analysis. Annual trends in relative search volume and seasonal variation were analyzed, and the top related topics and rising related topics were also selected and analyzed.
    Results: The top 15 most frequently cited articles each year were all original articles that focused on immunotherapy (n=8), omics (n=5), and the microbiome (n=2). The average relative search volume remained relatively stable across the years. The seasonal variation analysis revealed that the peak appeared in summer, and the valley appeared in winter. The diseases associated with or manifestations of melanoma, treatment options, risk factors, diagnostic tools, and prognosis were the topics in which the public was most interested. Most of the topics revealed by bibliometric and Google Trends analyses were consistent, with the exception of issues related to the molecular biology of melanoma.
    Conclusion: This study revealed the trends in research interest and public interest in melanoma, which may pave the way for further research.
    Keywords:  Google Trends; bibliometric analysis; melanoma; public interest; research interest
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2021.629687
  11. Zhonghua Lao Dong Wei Sheng Zhi Ye Bing Za Zhi. 2021 Feb 20. 39(2): 123-129
      Objective: To analyze the research status of ground-level ozone pollution, explore research trends and hot spots, and provide references for future research on air pollution. Methods: Papers on ground-level ozone pollution research published before December 31, 2019 had been retrieved in SCI-E database of the "Web of Science Core Collection" in January 2020. The retrieval strategies were set as follows: TS= ( ("Tropospheric Ozone" OR "Low Level Ozone" OR "Ground Level Ozone") AND ("Air pollution*" OR "Air quality") ) . The survey included 2084 articles. By using bibliometric research and visual analysis tools, the research status of global ground-level ozone pollution was revealed from the aspects of time, discipline, journal, financing, institution, country and key words. Results: Cumulative publications increased in a cubic function of y=0.05x(3)+0.80x(2)+0.74x+4.55 (R(2)=0.999, P<0.01) . The most studied subject was Environmental sciences ecology (1401 articles, 67.23%) . Atmospheric Environment was the journal with the most articles (332 articles, 15.93%) . The United States was the country with the most publications (44.67%, 931/2084) , while China ranked second (17.13%, 357/2084) . 80.39% (287/357) of Chinese papers had funding information. Among the top 10 research institutions, 7 and 2 were affiliated to the United States and China respectively. Source apportionment and human health were high frequency keywords that had appeared in the last 5 years. Conclusion: The research on ground-level ozone pollution is in a good period of development. The United States has a leading position in this area, and China has a good prospect in this field. Pollution source apportionment and human health effects are new research directions.
    Keywords:  Air pollution; Bibliometrics; Citespace; Ozone; VOSviewer
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3760/cma.j.cn121094-20200114-00027
  12. Pain Res Manag. 2021 ;2021 6655211
       Objectives: To provide a comprehensive review on the global scientific research status of comorbid pain and inflammation from 1981 to 2019 and capture its subsequent development trends. Data Sources. The primary database chosen to collect publications on comorbid pain and inflammation research from 1981 to 2019 was the Web of Science (WOS). Core of the search strategy was the key word "pain" and the key word "inflammation" in the medical subject headings' major field. Study Selection. All articles retrieved were included in the bibliometric analysis. Data Extraction. We used CiteSpace to analyze publication outputs, subject categories, distribution by country/institution/journal, and other types of information. Then, knowledge base, hot issues, and future development directions were explained. Data Synthesis. A total of 2887 papers met the inclusion criteria in our research. Linear regression analysis results showed that the publications of studies of comorbid pain and inflammation significantly increased (P < 0.001) and have grown about 192 times in 40 years. The countries with the most outputs were the USA (886 publications), China (375 publications), and England (236 publications). Besides, Harvard University was the most prolific institution with 730 publications and 6646 citations. In accordance with the subject categories of WOS, neurosciences (31.832%), pharmacology/pharmacy (18.427%), and clinical neurology (15.206%) were the main research areas of these 2887 papers.
    Conclusions: The current study reveals that research on comorbid pain and inflammation has gradually become more extensive worldwide since 1981, and neuropathic pain was the most popular study type. Most of our research output in this field came from countries in Europe and North America, although some Asian countries showed promising performance.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/6655211
  13. J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg. 2021 Feb 03. pii: S0022-5223(21)00187-2. [Epub ahead of print]
       OBJECTIVE: National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for academic (noncardiac) thoracic surgeons at the top-140 NIH-funded institutes in the United States was assessed. We hypothesized that thoracic surgeons have difficulty in obtaining NIH funding in a difficult funding climate.
    METHODS: The top-140 NIH-funded institutes' faculty pages were searched for noncardiac thoracic surgeons. Surgeon data, including gender, academic rank, and postfellowship training were recorded. These surgeons were then queried in NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools Expenditures and Results for their funding history. Analysis of the resulting grants (1980-2019) included grant type, funding amount, project start/end dates, publications, and a citation-based Grant Impact Metric to evaluate productivity.
    RESULTS: A total of 395 general thoracic surgeons were evaluated with 63 (16%) receiving NIH funding. These 63 surgeons received 136 grants totaling $228 million, resulting in 1772 publications, and generating more than 50,000 citations. Thoracic surgeons have obtained NIH funding at an increasing rate (1980-2019); however, they have a low percentage of R01 renewal (17.3%). NIH-funded thoracic surgeons were more likely to have a higher professorship level. Thoracic surgeons perform similarly to other physician-scientists in converting K-Awards into R01 funding.
    CONCLUSIONS: Contrary to our hypothesis, thoracic surgeons have received more NIH funding over time. Thoracic surgeons are able to fill the roles of modern surgeon-scientists by obtaining NIH funding during an era of increasing clinical demands. The NIH should continue to support this mission.
    Keywords:  NIH funding; basic science research; grants; thoracic surgery research
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtcvs.2021.01.088
  14. Curr Oncol. 2020 Nov 30. 28(1): 4-12
      (1) Background: Research productivity is a mandatory component of Canadian radiation oncology (RO) resident training. To our knowledge, Canadian RO resident research publication productivity has not previously been analysed. (2) Methods: We compiled a 12-year database of RO residents in Canadian training programs who completed residency between June 2005 and June 2016. Resident names and dates of training were abstracted from provincial databases and department websites and were used to abstract data from PubMed, including training program, publication year, journal, type of research, topic and authorship position. Residents were divided into four time periods and the linear trend test evaluated publication rates over time. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses were performed to identify authorship predictors. (3) Results: 227 RO residents representing 363 publications were identified. The majority were first-author publications (56%) and original research (77%). Overall, 82% of first-author, and 80% of any-author articles were published in resident year 4 or higher. Mean number of publications for first-author and any-author positions increased significantly over time (p = 0.016 and p = 0.039, respectively). After adjusting for gender and time period, large institutions (> 3 residents per year) trended toward associations with more first-author publications (odds ratio (OR): 2.44; p = 0.066) and more any-author publications (OR: 2.49; p = 0.052). No significant differences were observed by gender. (4) Conclusions: Canadian RO resident publication productivity nearly doubled over a 12-year period. The majority of publications are released in the last 2 years of residency, and larger residency programs may be associated with more publications. These findings serve as a baseline as programs transition to Competency Based Medical Education (CBME).
    Keywords:  academic productivity; publications; radiation oncology; resident research
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/curroncol28010003
  15. Med Sci Educ. 2021 Mar 02. 1-11
       Objective: Progress in electronic learning (e-learning) and health sciences education is an indicator of the national and international efforts to achieve sustainable development goals regarding good health and quality education. The objective of the current study was to describe research volume and trends on e-learning in the health sciences education.
    Methods: A bibliometric methodology was adopted. The study period was from database inception until December 31, 2020. The data was downloaded from Scopus as a "csv" file. The data was analyzed to reveal prominent contributing countries, institution, authorship patterns, the degree of collaboration, international research collaboration, prominent sources for publications, frequent author keywords, the impact of research in terms of citations, and healthcare groups targeted in research.
    Results: In total, 4576 records were retrieved. The analysis revealed an increasing growth in number of publications with time. There was a sharp peak in 2020. Recent literature on e-learning in health education included keywords such as flipped classroom, mobile learning, blended learning, and COVID-19. Countries in the European region and the region of the Americas have the highest contribution while countries in the African and the South-East Asian region have the least contribution. There was an increasing trend in the degree of author collaboration with time. However, the extent of international research collaboration was inadequate. The USA had the least percentage of documents with international authors (18%) while Sweden had the highest (70.6%). Documents published from Canada had the highest number of citations per document. The Karolinska Institute, based in Sweden, was the most active institution. The Medical Teacher journal ranked first in the number of publications while documents published in the Academic Medicine journal received the highest number of citations per document. The bulk of the retrieved literature was about medical or nursing education. The retrieved documents had an average of 12.7 citations per document and an H-index of 81.
    Conclusion: Data presented can be used to develop and enhance e-learning in health sciences education in regions with poor research contribution. Policies regarding open access publications, international research collaboration, and adoption of e-learning methodologies in low- and middle-income countries need to be endorsed.
    Keywords:  Bibliometrics; E-learning; Health education; Research
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s40670-021-01254-6
  16. J Pediatr Surg. 2021 Feb 11. pii: S0022-3468(21)00109-3. [Epub ahead of print]
       INTRODUCTION: The disruption score is a new bibliometric tool that has recently been utilized to identify studies that are innovative and shift paradigms. We sought to identify and characterize the top 100 most disruptive publications in pediatric surgery.
    METHODS: The 100 most disruptive and cited publications in 17 pediatric surgery journals were identified from a validated dataset and linked with the iCite NIH tool. The top 100 most disruptive publications were reviewed to determine study design, clinical focus, and perceived contribution.
    RESULTS: The publications included in the top 100 list were more disruptive than 99.5% of the entire PubMed universe. Journal of Pediatric Surgery (n = 45) had the most articles included. There was a weak correlation between citation count and disruption score (r = 0.27). Retrospective cohort studies (38%), contributions in clinical outcomes (39%), technical/technological innovations (31%), clinical focus in trauma (18%), and disorders of the gastrointestinal tract (18%) were the most represented. The disruption score identified a unique subset of literature that has created new paradigms with long lasting influence and may be further applied as another tool to measure scientific impact. This wide array of literature highlights both technical and technological innovations as well as key moments in the history of pediatric surgery.
    LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: V.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric; Citation; Disruption; Pediatric; Surgery
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpedsurg.2021.02.002
  17. Clin Exp Optom. 2021 Mar 04. 1-15
      Clinical relevance: Clinical optometric practice is underpinned by a rigorous research base, the primary evidence for which is publications in refereed scientific journals. Leading optometrists who publish this work should be identified and celebrated.Background: This work aims to derive publication metrics of the leading optometric researchers worldwide.Methods: An extensive global search was conducted to discover leading optometric researchers; 480 names were identified. A custom-designed bibliographic search tool was developed to interrogate the Scopus database (Elsevier) and extract publication metrics using the unique Scopus Author Identifier number for each optometrist. On 13 January 2021, the full list was reduced to 200 optometrists (the 'Top 200') ranked by h-index - the 'Global Optometrist Top 200 Research Ranking'. The output from the custom tool automatically updates every 24 hours and is available at www.optomrankings.com.Results: The Top 200 have h-indices ranging from 20 to 67 and have published between 28 and 440 papers. Sixty one (30.5%) are women. Konrad Pesudovs has the highest h-index (67) and citations (51,193). The most prolific author is Robert Hess (442 papers). David Piñero is publishing at the fastest rate (17.6 papers per year). The Top 200 work in 13 nations, of whom 172 (86.0%) work in four nations: USA - 76 (38.0%), Australia - 43 (21.5%), UK - 41 (20.5%) and Canada - 16 (8.0%). Of the 72 institutions represented, the University of California, Berkeley, USA is home to the most Top 200 optometrists (17) and has the highest combined h-index of Top 200 optometrists (132).Conclusions: The optometric profession is supported by a robust research base, prosecuted by a large international cohort of optometric researchers who publish extensively on a broad range of ophthalmic issues and whose work is highly cited. The 200 most impactful optometrists in the world are identified.
    Keywords:  Citations; global optometrist research ranking; h-index; publication metrics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/08164622.2021.1878863
  18. PLoS One. 2021 ;16(3): e0248335
      Over a decade ago, we introduced Anne O'Tate, a free, public web-based tool http://arrowsmith.psych.uic.edu/cgi-bin/arrowsmith_uic/AnneOTate.cgi to support user-driven summarization, drill-down and mining of search results from PubMed, the leading search engine for biomedical literature. A set of hotlinked buttons allows the user to sort and rank retrieved articles according to important words in titles and abstracts; topics; author names; affiliations; journal names; publication year; and clustered by topic. Any result can be further mined by choosing any other button, and small search results can be expanded to include related articles. It has been deployed continuously, serving a wide range of biomedical users and needs, and over time has also served as a platform to support the creation of new tools that address additional needs. Here we describe the current, greatly expanded implementation of Anne O'Tate, which has added additional buttons to provide new functionalities: We now allow users to sort and rank search results by important phrases contained in titles and abstracts; the number of authors listed on the article; and pairs of topics that co-occur significantly more than chance. We also display articles according to NLM-indexed publication types, as well as according to 50 different publication types and study designs as predicted by a novel machine learning-based model. Furthermore, users can import search results into two new tools: e) Mine the Gap!, which identifies pairs of topics that are under-represented within set of the search results, and f) Citation Cloud, which for any given article, allows users to visualize the set of articles that cite it; that are cited by it; that are co-cited with it; and that are bibliographically coupled to it. We invite the scientific community to explore how Anne O'Tate can assist in analyzing biomedical literature, in a variety of use cases.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248335
  19. Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2021 Mar 13.
      Waste foundry sand (WFS) is the by-product of the foundry industry, which is produced about 0.6 tons per 1 ton of foundry industry production. While it cannot be recycled or reused, it will be disposed of in landfills. Today, with increasing attention to environmental issues, the reuse and recycle of materials because of limited resources have been considered. Due to the desirable properties of WFS, many studies have been done on the properties and performance of its use in various industries, especially in concrete technology. The purpose of this paper is to conduct a bibliometric analysis of foundry sand research during the years 1971-2020. Various aspects, such as document types, languages, major journals, key countries, authors, and keywords, have been examined. The collaborations among authors and countries were constructed, visualized, and evaluated through the application of the social network analysis method based on co-authorship relations. Also, keyword cluster analysis has been performed using co-occurrence relations to discover the most prominent issues related to WFS. The results showed that the number of publications (TP) has improved significantly in recent years, especially in 2018-2020. It has increased from 1 in 1971 to 38 in 2020. The engineering subdivision with 33% has had the highest number of papers. Also, India, China, and the USA have the highest number of publications, respectively. Statistical data from the author keyword study showed that in general, papers can be classified into three categories in terms of subject: first, characteristics of WFS and its importance; second, the use of WFS in concrete and the study of mechanical and physical properties as one of its applications; and the third, investigation on environmental effects and damage caused by disposal and landfill of WFS and efforts to find solutions for recycling and reuse. The keywords "Waste Foundry Sand," "Foundry Sand," and "Compressive Strength" with a growth rate of 2700%, 1900%, and 1100%, respectively, are important topics in the field of WFS research.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; Research trend; Social network analysis (SNA); VOS viewer; Waste foundry sand (WFS); Waste management
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13251-8
  20. Mycopathologia. 2021 Mar 11.
      The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on the publishing landscape. The 'pre-peer-review' publication model is likely to become common as a lag in publishing is not acceptable in a pandemic or other time! Mycopathologia is well placed to adopt such changes with its improved editorial processes, article formats, author engagements, and published articles' access and citation. Mycopathologia had an improved journal impact factor and article downloads in 2018-2019. A limited sampling suggested a slight decrease in the total submissions in 2019 (352 articles) compared to 2018 (371 articles). However, the acceptance rate improved to 30% in 2019 from 19% in 2018. Nearly half of all submissions in 2019 were rejected before peer-review or transferred to other Springer Nature journals. The published articles were contributed from 34 different countries, with authors from China, the USA, and Brazil among the top three contributors. An enhanced editorial oversight allowed peer-reviewers to focus on fewer articles that were well-matched to their expertise, which led to lower rejection rates post-peer-review. The introduction of MycopathologiaGENOME and MycopathologiaIMAGE article types received a good reception with notable downloads and citations.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11046-021-00531-7
  21. Clin Exp Optom. 2021 Feb 24. 1-3
      
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; citations; h-index; myopia; publication metrics; refractive error
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/08164622.2021.1880868
  22. Clin Exp Optom. 2021 Feb 23. 1-2
      
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; citations; dry eye; h-index; meibomian gland dysfunction; publication metrics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/08164622.2021.1887581
  23. J Family Community Med. 2021 Jan-Apr;28(1):28(1): 1-7
      Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, turned into a pandemic in record time. Communication of disease presentation and mechanism of spread remain keys to getting ahead of the virus and limiting its spread beyond the capacity of management. Owing to huge academic focus and pandemic concern around the globe, this bibliometric analysis investigated research productivity related to coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic using the Web of Science database. The relevant data were harvested, and search query was further refined by publication years (2020 OR 2019) and document types (article, book chapter, and proceedings paper). Finally, 6694 records were imported and downloaded in Plaintext and BibTeX formats on August 1, 2020. The data analysis was performed using MS Excel, VOS viewer, and Biblioshiny software. Of the 6694 publications that appeared in that period, the USA and Chinese research institutions topped the numbers. At the same time, the Journal of Medical Virology and CUREUS (Cureus Journal of Medical Science), remained favorite journals for publications. The pattern of multi-author publications has outstripped that of single-authors. Apart from COVID-19 and the novel coronavirus, the important keywords mentioned included pandemic, pneumonia, epidemiology, public health, outbreak, epidemic, China, infection, and treatment. The analysis shows a strong local research response from China, with large teams reporting on the disease outbreak. Subsequent studies will document a global response as the virus spreads worldwide. The initial research related to the current coronavirus outbreak was reported from within China. The data and patterns were supposed to alter as the virus spread globally.
    Keywords:  2019-nCoV; COVID-19; China; bibliometric; bibliometric-coronavirus; health care; pandemic; research productivity; severe acute respiratory syndrome-cov-2; the World Health Organization
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.4103/jfcm.JFCM_332_20
  24. Front Psychol. 2021 ;12 631516
      Sigmund Freud is occasionally perceived as outdated and his work no longer relevant to academia. The citing papers (CPs) that cited Freud works were collected from Web of Science and analyzed. The 10 most common research areas of the CPs were noted, and the overall volume of the respective bodies of literature were retrieved. I computed the annual percentage of the respective bodies of literature that cited Freud. On a separate note, I computed the annual percentage of citations coming from psychology and psychiatry. Results based on 42,571 CPs found that psychology accounted for over half of the citations to Freud. The percentage of psychology papers citing Freud declined gradually from around 3% in the late 1950s to around 1% in the 2010s, in an extent of -0.02% per year over the entire survey period spanning across 65 years from 1956 till 2020 (P < 0.001). In psychiatry, a similar decline was observed, from around 4-4.5% in the late 1950s to just below 0.5% in the 2010s, in an extent of -0.1% per year (P < 0.001). However, a reverse trend was observed for psychoanalysis literature, which generally increased from 10-20% before the 1980s to 25-30% since the 2000s, in an extent of +0.2% per year (P < 0.001). Meanwhile, the annual percentage of CPs coming from psychology and psychiatry was decreasing by 0.4% per year (P < 0.001). Bibliometric data supported the notion that Freud's influence was on a decline in psychology and psychiatry fields.
    Keywords:  Freud; citation analysis; psychiatry; psychoanalysis; psychology
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.631516
  25. Scientometrics. 2021 Feb 28. 1-15
      In this study we determined whether Twitter data can be used as social-spatial sensors to show how research on COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 diffuses through the population to reach the people that are affected by the disease. We performed a cross-sectional bibliometric analysis between 23rd March and 14th April 2020. Three sources of data were used: (1) deaths per number of population for COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 retrieved from John Hopkins University and Worldometer, (2) publications related to COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 retrieved from World Health Organisation COVID-19 database, and (3) tweets of these publications retrieved from Altmetric.com and Twitter. In the analysis, the number of publications used was 1761, and number of tweets used was 751,068. Mapping of worldwide data illustrated that high Twitter activity was related to high numbers of COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 deaths, with tweets inversely weighted with number of publications. Regression models of worldwide data showed a positive correlation between the national deaths per number of population and tweets when holding number of publications constant (coefficient 0.0285, S.E. 0.0003, p < 0.001). Twitter can play a crucial role in the rapid research response during the COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, especially to spread research with prompt public scrutiny. Governments are urged to pause censorship of social media platforms to support the scientific community's fight against COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2.
    Keywords:  Altmetrics; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Spatial maps; Twitter
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03843-5
  26. Urology. 2021 Mar 04. pii: S0090-4295(21)00219-3. [Epub ahead of print]
       OBJECTIVE: To study patterns and factors associated with female representation in the American Urological Association (AUA) guidelines.
    METHODS: We gathered publicly available information about the panelists, including AUA section, practice setting, academic rank, fellowship training, years in practice, and H-index. The factors associated with the proportion of female panelists and trends were investigated. We also examined the proportion of female panelists in the EAU and NCCN urology guidelines.
    RESULTS: There were 483 non-unique panelists in AUA guidelines, and 17% are female. Non-urologist female panelists in AUA guidelines represent a higher proportion than female urologists (30% vs. 13%, p<0.0001). Compared with male panelists, females had lower H-indices (median 23 vs. 35, p<0.001), and fewer were fellowship-trained (77.2% vs. 86.8%; p=0.042). On multivariate analysis, non-urologists and panelists with lower H-indices were more likely to be female but there was no association between guideline specialties, academic ranking, geographic section, years in practice, and fellowship training with increased female authorship. Over time, the proportion of female participation in guidelines remained stable. In the EAU and NCCN guideline panels, 12.2% and 10.7% were female, respectively.
    CONCLUSION: Female representation among major urologic guidelines members is low and unchanged over time. Female urologist participation was proportional to their representation in the urology workforce. Being a non-urologist and lower H-indices were associated with female membership in guideline panels.
    Keywords:  committee membership; guidelines as topic; urology; women
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.urology.2021.02.027
  27. Plast Reconstr Surg Glob Open. 2021 Feb;9(2): e3439
      Hirsch-index (or h-index) is a bibliometric measure calculated for researchers based on number of publications and their citations. This study examined the h-index of board-certified plastic surgeons in Saudi Arabia and the different factors that may influence it.
    Method: In this cross-sectional study, an electronic questionnaire was sent to 156 board-certified plastic surgeons practicing in Saudi Arabia. Using their names, we conducted an online search on Scopus, Semantic scholar, and Google scholar to calculate their h-index. Bivariate and multiple regression analyses were conducted to determine the relationship of those factors with the index.
    Results: A total of 84 surgeons participated in this study, of whom 83.3% were men. Our sample scored a mean index of 1.7 and published a mean of 5 articles. More publications and a higher academic rank predicted a higher h-index, (β = 0.79, P < 0.001) and (β = 0.14, P 0.017), respectively. On the other end of the spectrum, the country of residency training (P 0.33), the year of training completion (P 0.95), attaining fellowship training (P 0.95), the number of fellowships (P 0.20), interest in research (P 0.74), working in an academic hospital (P 0.44), or attaining a higher degree (P 0.61) were not significant independent predictors of the index.
    Conclusions: More publications and a higher rank predicted increased academic productivity among the plastic surgeons in Saudi Arabia. Despite its limitations, h-index is a useful measure that can be considered in promotions and applications to prestigious plastic surgery centers in adjunct to other factors.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1097/GOX.0000000000003439
  28. J Infect Dev Ctries. 2021 03 07. 15(2): 185-190
       INTRODUCTION: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) outbreak has been a global pandemic. Researchers have made great efforts to investigate SARS-CoV-2. However, there are few studies analyzing the general situation of SARS-CoV-2 research at global level. This study aimed to characterize global scientific efforts based on SARS-CoV-2 publications.
    METHODOLOGY: SARS-CoV-2 -related publications were retrieved using Web of Science. The number of publications, citation, country, journal, study topic, total confirmed cases, and total deaths were analyzed.
    RESULTS: A total of 441 publications were identified. China contributed the largest number of publications (198, 44.90%), followed by USA (51, 11.56%), Italy (28, 6.35%), Germany (19, 4.31%), and South Korea (13, 2.95%). Upper-middle-income economies (51.70%) produced the most SARS-CoV-2 publications, followed by high-income (45.12%), lower-middle-income (2.95%), and low-income economies (0.23%). The research output had a significant correlations with total confirmed cases (r = 0.666, p = 0.000) and total deaths (r = 0.610, p = 0.000). China had the highest total citations (1947), followed by USA (204), and Germany (54). China also had the highest average citations (9.83), followed by Netherlands (5.80), and Canada (5.43). The most popular journals were Journal of Medical Virology, Eurosurveillance, and Emerging Microbes and Infections. The most discussed topic was the epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2.
    CONCLUSIONS: Scientific research on SARS-CoV-2 is from worldwide researchers' efforts, with some countries and journals having special contributions. The countries with more total confirmed cases and total deaths tend to have more research output in the field of SARS-CoV-2. China was the most prolific country, and had the highest quality of publications on SARS-CoV-2.
    Keywords:  SARS-CoV-2; citation; country; publication; six; web of science
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3855/jidc.13318
  29. J Environ Manage. 2021 Mar 05. pii: S0301-4797(21)00330-3. [Epub ahead of print]286 112268
      Several initiatives have been proposed to address food waste and loss issues and support stakeholders throughout the food chain. However, the literature still lacks a review paper that compiles methods, practices, and solutions to reduce food waste and loss. With the goal of filling this gap, this paper aims to compile and gather food waste and loss prevention and minimization methods to support decision-makers and other stakeholders along the food chain. Through a systematic literature review, we have outlined research findings and empirical studies on food waste and loss prevention and minimization methods previously published, studied, implemented, and discussed in the scientific literature worldwide. A sample of 84 articles was analyzed. As a result, this study provides a bibliometric analysis of the sample and a classification of the prevention and minimization methods found in the articles in 10 fields established by the authors. A coverage analysis of empirical studies was also performed, cross-checking the data with the type of food extracted from the case studies application. Lastly, suggestions of future research extracted from the articles were compiled into a research agenda to indicate trends and support academics, researchers, practitioners, and other stakeholders involved in the food chain to develop and study practices to minimize and prevent food waste and loss. The main contribution of this study is an inventory of the theoretical and practical methods of prevention and minimization of food waste and loss found in the literature, grouping them according to their similarities, to support stakeholders improving actions to reduce food waste in cities, farms, retail, and other sustainable ecosystems.
    Keywords:  Food waste/loss; Minimization; Prevention; Systematic literature review
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112268
  30. Front Big Data. 2019 ;2 29
      The interplay between an academic's gender and their scholarly output is a riveting topic at the intersection of scientometrics, data science, gender studies, and sociology. Its effects can be studied to analyze the role of gender in research productivity, tenure and promotion standards, collaboration and networks, or scientific impact, among others. The typical methodology in this field of research is based on a number of assumptions that are customarily not discussed in detail in the relevant literature, but undoubtedly merit a critical examination. Presumably the most confronting aspect is the categorization of gender. An author's gender is typically inferred from their name, further reduced to a binary feature by an algorithmic procedure. This and subsequent data processing steps introduce biases whose effects are hard to estimate. In this report we describe said problems and discuss the reception and interplay of this line of research within the field. We also outline the effect of obstacles, such as non-availability of data and code for transparent communication. Building on our research on gender effects on scientific publications, we challenge the prevailing methodology in the field and offer a critical reflection on some of its flaws and pitfalls. Our observations are meant to open up the discussion around the need and feasibility of more elaborated approaches to tackle gender in conjunction with analyses of bibliographic sources.
    Keywords:  automatic gender recognition; bias; data science; gender; reproducibility; science studies; societal issues
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2019.00029
  31. Front Big Data. 2019 ;2 22
      Collaboration networks are defined as a set of individuals who come together and collaborate on particular tasks such as publishing a paper. The analysis of such networks permits to extract knowledge on the structure and patterns of communities. The link definition and network extraction have a high impact on the analysis of collaboration networks. Previous studies model the connectivity in a network considering it as a binomial problem with respect to the existence of a collaboration between individuals. However, such a data consists of a high diversity of features that describe the quality of the interaction such as the contribution amount of each individual. In this paper, we have determined a solution to extract collaboration networks using corresponding features in a dataset. We define collaboration score to quantify the collaboration between collaborators. In order to validate our proposed method, we benefit from a scientific research institute dataset in which researchers are co-authors who are involved in the production of papers, prototypes, and intellectual properties (IP). We evaluated the generated networks, produced through different thresholds of collaboration score, by employing a set of network analysis metrics such as clustering coefficient, network density, and centrality measures. We investigated more the obtained networks using a community detection algorithm to further discuss the impact of our model on community detection. The outcome shows that the quality of resulted communities on the extracted collaboration networks can differ significantly based on the choice of the linkage threshold.
    Keywords:  collaboration network; community detection analysis; data analysis; data-to-network; network interactions
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2019.00022
  32. Front Med (Lausanne). 2021 ;8 635035
      Although all cancers are molecularly distinct, many share common driver mutations. Pan-cancer analysis, utilizes next-generation sequencing (NGS), pan-cancer model systems, and pan-cancer projects such as The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), to assess frequently mutated genes and other genomic abnormalities that are common among many cancer types, regardless of the tumor origin, providing new directions for tumor biology research. However, there is currently no study that has objectively analyzed the results of pan-cancer studies on cancer biology. For this study, 999 articles on pan-cancer published from 2006 to 2020 were obtained from the Scopus database, and bibliometric methods were used to analyze citations, international cooperation, co-authorship and keyword co-occurrence clusters. Furthermore, we also focused on and summarized the application of pan-cancer in breast cancer. Our result shows that the pan-cancer studies were first published in 2006 and entered a period of rapid development after 2013. So far, 86 countries have carried out international cooperation in sharing research. Researchers form the United States and Canada have published the most articles and have made the most extensive contribution to this field, respectively. Through author keyword analysis of the 999 articles, TCGA, biomarkers, NGS, immunotherapy, DNA methylation, prognosis, and several other keywords appear frequently, and these terms are hot spots in pan-cancer studies. There are four subtypes of breast cancer (luminalA, luminalB, HER2, and basal-like) according to pan-cancer analysis of breast cancer. Meanwhile, it was found that breast cancer has genetic similarity to pan-gynecological cancers, such as ovarian cancer, which indicates related etiology and possibly similar treatments. Collectively, with the emergence of new detection methods, new cancer databases, and the involvement of more researchers, pan-cancer analyses will play a greater role in cancer biology research.
    Keywords:  Scopus; TCGA; VOSviewer; bibliometrics; pan-cancer
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2021.635035
  33. Neurol Neurochir Pol. 2021 Mar 12.
       INTRODUCTION: Glioblastoma is the most common, and the most lethal, primary malignant brain tumour in adults. The aim of the study was to present a comprehensive, data-based review of glioblastoma treatment research, considering all clinical trials and peer-reviewed journal publications.
    MATERIALS AND METHODS: Data regarding all glioblastoma clinical trials that was available on 7 August 2019 on ClinicalTrials.gov was analysed. Information on interventions' mechanisms of action was obtained from AdisInsight. A PubMed search for 'glioblastoma' was performed in September 2019. Citation counts were gathered from Scopus. Custom software for obtaining and analyzing data was developed by the authors.
    RESULTS: 1,388 clinical trials on glioblastoma with a start date between 1979 and 2020 were identified. The distribution of glioblastoma clinical trial phases differs significantly from that of other high-mortality cancers. 526 unique interventions of clinical trials and 206 molecular targets have been isolated. 32,410 publications on glioblastoma have been found, the number having increased especially since 2006. Publications on identified treatment options comprised 32.2%. Publications on glioblastoma are cited on average 4.27 times per year. The average specificity of treatment options' publications for glioblastoma is 6.9%.
    CONCLUSIONS: Glioblastoma treatment options and their molecular targets can be quantitatively ranked according to their scientific research output. To the best of our knowledge, no such registries have been elaborated before.
    Keywords:  clinical trial; glioblastoma; literature; research; review; treatment
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.5603/PJNNS.a2021.0024
  34. Sci Rep. 2021 Mar 11. 11(1): 5721
      Two computational methods based on the Ising model were implemented for studying temporal dynamic in co-authorship networks: an interpretative for real networks and another for simulation via Monte Carlo. The objective of simulation networks is to evaluate if the Ising model describes in similar way the dynamic of the network and of the magnetic system, so that it can be found a generalized explanation to the behaviours observed in real networks. The scientific papers used for building the real networks were acquired from WoS core collection. The variables for each record took into account bibliographic references. The search equation for each network considered specific topics trying to obtain an advanced temporal evolution in terms of the addition of new nodes; that means 3 steps, a time to reach the interest of the scientific community, a gradual increase until reaching a peak and finally, a decreasing trend by losing of novelty. It is possible to conclude that both methods are consistent with each other, showing that the Ising model can predict behaviours such as the number and size of communities (or domains) according to the temporal distribution of new nodes.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-85041-8
  35. Educ Inf Technol (Dordr). 2021 Mar 04. 1-31
      This paper aims to examine the current dynamics of the flipped classroom studies and to propose a direction for future research for the field. Using a bibliometric approach, we observe a sample of 1557 documents from the Scopus database to identify research activity on the flipped classroom. The keywords "flipped classroom" and "flipped learning" have been executed in the search query. We presented the earlier stage of research in the flipped classroom, the subsequent trends, publications status based on source title, country and institution and examined citations pattern of the publication. We also discuss the themes based on the occurrences and terms of the keywords, title and abstract of the documents. This paper also predicts the future study in the flipped classroom using Lotka's law. We found that the pattern distribution of the author's contribution fits with the law. We conclude by suggesting a few potential research directions on the flipped classroom. Research on flipped classroom focuses on approaches, strategies and effectiveness perceived by practitioners and learners with relatively less attention on author's contribution and the prediction on their future and sustainable contribution and networking in guaranteeing the survival and expansion of flipped classroom approach for the coming decades.
    Keywords:  Active learning; Bibliometrics analysis, Lotka’s law; Blended learning; Flipped classroom; Flipped learning
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-021-10457-8
  36. J Pediatr Surg. 2021 Feb 14. pii: S0022-3468(21)00121-4. [Epub ahead of print]
      This is a commentary on the manuscript by Sullivan G, Skertich N, Gulack B, et al., titled "Shifting Paradigms: The Top Most Disruptive Papers in Core Pediatric Surgery Journals".
    Keywords:  Bibliometric; Citation; Disruption; Pediatric; Surgery
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpedsurg.2021.02.013
  37. Asian J Neurosurg. 2020 Oct-Dec;15(4):15(4): 828-832
      Women in Neurosurgery (WIN) have come a long way and are making inroads in every neurosurgical subspecialty. There has been a worldwide increase in the number of female neurosurgeons both in the training and practice. Although this is a welcome trend, gender equality at work in terms of opportunities, promotions, and pay scales are yet to be attained. This is more apparent in the developing and underdeveloped nations. Barriers for a female neurosurgeon exist in every phase before entering residency, during training, and at workplace. In the neurosurgical specialty, only a few women are in chief academic and leadership positions, and this situation needs to improve. WIN should be motivated to pursue fellowships, sub-specialty training, research, and academic activities. Furthermore, men should come forward to mentor women, only then the gender debates will disappear and true excellence in neurosurgery can be attained. This article reviews the issues that are relevant in the present era focusing on the barriers faced by female neurosurgeons in the developing and underdeveloped countries and the possible solutions to achieve gender equality in neurosurgery. The authors also present the data from the World WIN Directory collected as a part of Asian Congress of Neurological Surgeons-WINS project 2019. These numbers are expected to grow as the WIN progress and add value to the neurosurgical community at large.
    Keywords:  Barriers; female neurosurgeons; gender equality; leadership; mentoring; work-life balance; world WIN directory
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.4103/ajns.AJNS_108_20
  38. Pediatr Radiol. 2021 Mar 12.
       BACKGROUND: Pediatric interventional radiology has grown as an advanced subspecialty with increased demand, number and complexity of cases, and number of pediatric institutions offering a pediatric interventional radiology service. Despite the overall increase in the number of pediatric interventionalists over the past two decades, there is a heterogeneity in their academic backgrounds and a lack of uniform training pathways.
    OBJECTIVE: To analyze the demographics, academic backgrounds and scholarly activities of pediatric interventionalists across the United States (U.S.) and Canada.
    MATERIALS AND METHODS: A list of all members of the Society for Pediatric Interventional Radiology was obtained and pediatric interventionalists at academic and private practice institutions in the U.S. and Canada were included. Publicly available online sources were used to gather demographic and educational information about each pediatric interventionalist, which included the online curriculum vitae, the HealthGrades.com and Doximity.com websites, and Elsevier's Scopus database. Demographic and educational data including age, gender, educational background, additional degrees, academic rank, previous leadership positions, and metrics of scholarly activities were recorded. Fellowships in diagnostic pediatric radiology, adult interventional radiology and/or pediatric interventional radiology were recorded. Mann-Whitney U tests and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare differences between groups.
    RESULTS: One hundred and twenty-five pediatric interventionalists were included, of whom 24 (19.2%) were female. The mean age was 48.6 years (standard deviation [SD]: 10.6, median: 45 years, range: 36-82 years). There was no statistical difference between median age for male versus female pediatric interventionalists (44.5 years vs. 45 years, P=0.89). A majority of pediatric interventionalists were American medical school graduates (96, 76.8%), while 29 (23.2%) were international medical graduates. Eighty-three percent (104) of the pediatric interventionalists completed diagnostic radiology residency training in the U.S., most commonly at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio (6.4%) and Washington University in St. Louis, MO (5.6%). Among fellowship training, pediatric interventionalists completed a pediatric radiology fellowship (61.6%), adult interventional radiology fellowship (40%) and/or a dedicated pediatric interventional radiology fellowship (57.6%). The mean±SD (median) publications, citations and Hirsch index (h-index) for pediatric interventionalists were 32±45 (12), 68±1,317 (120) and 9±10 (5), respectively. There was a statistically higher number of publications, citations and h-index with increasing academic rank at the assistant, associate and professor levels (P<0.001 for all groups). International medical graduate pediatric interventionalists had a higher, but not statistically significant, median publication count (26 vs. 11, P=0.0.25), citation count (236 vs. 93, P=0.36) and h-index (9.0 vs. 5, P=0.24) compared to pediatric interventional radiologists from American medical schools.
    CONCLUSION: Pediatric interventionalists in North America are predominantly male, with about a quarter having graduated from international medical schools. Pediatric radiology fellowship, followed by pediatric interventional radiology fellowship, was the most frequently pursued training pathway.
    Keywords:  Fellowship; Interventional radiology; Pediatric interventional radiology; Pediatric radiology; Workforce
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s00247-021-05014-x
  39. Biochem Mol Biol Educ. 2021 Mar 08.
      The benefits and long-term effects of extracurricular scientific research on undergraduate students in many countries have been intensively investigated, but it remains obscure for Chinese medical students. In this study, we investigated the outcome of 60 medical students who have participated in extracurricular scientific research at Jinan University Medical School over a period of 7 years (2011-2018). The results revealed that these students have contributed to 31 biomedical science articles in reputable academic journals, as first- or co-authors. Furthermore, they also independently procured various funding based on their research achievements, and smaller awards for achievements in conferences and competitions. Assessment of the grade point average score of these students revealed that conducting extracurricular scientific research did not affect their routine medical study and exam grades (P>0.05). The students benefited from participating in extracurricular research, by acquiring the ability to think scientifically and enhancing their communication skills. In addition, the medical students were motivated to enlist for postgraduate studies so that they could further embark in scientific research. In sum, Chinese medical students are capable of participating in scientific research and make a significant contribution to science.
    Keywords:  Chinese medical students; achievements; long-term outcome; scientific training; undergraduate extracurricular research
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1002/bmb.21499
  40. Front Big Data. 2019 ;2 39
      This study aims to validate whether the research performance of scholars correlates with how the scholars work together. Although the most straightforward approaches are centrality measurements or community detection, scholars mostly participate in multiple research groups and have different roles in each group. Thus, we concentrate on the subgraphs of co-authorship networks rooted in each scholar that cover (i) overlapping of the research groups on the scholar and (ii) roles of the scholar in the groups. This study calls the subgraphs "collaboration patterns" and applies subgraph embedding methods to discover and represent the collaboration patterns. Based on embedding the collaboration patterns, we have clustered scholars according to their collaboration styles. Then, we have examined whether scholars in each cluster have similar research performance, using the quantitative indicators. The coherence of the indicators cannot be solid proofs for validating the correlation between collaboration and performance. Nevertheless, the examination for clusters has exhibited that the collaboration patterns can reflect research styles of scholars. This information will enable us to predict the research performance more accurately since the research styles are more consistent and sustainable features of scholars than a few high-impact publications.
    Keywords:  bibliographic network embedding; collaboration pattern discovery; research collaboration; research group analysis; research performance estimation
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2019.00039
  41. Dose Response. 2021 Jan-Mar;19(1):19(1): 1559325821995655
      More than one third of the worldwide hormesis research has been produced at institutions in the United States (US). Although the US ranked first in terms of hormesis publication records from the mid. 1980s to the mid-late 2010s, China became the largest producer of hormesis publications in the years 2019-2020. As China is transforming into a powerhouse of hormesis research, new opportunities might arise for the research field.
    Keywords:  biphasic response; dose-response relationship; hermetic; publication trends; science publishing; scientific literature
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/1559325821995655
  42. Front Big Data. 2019 ;2 38
      The volume of scientific articles grow rapidly, producing a scientific basis for understanding and identifying the research problems and the state-of-the-art solutions. Despite the considerable significance of the problem-solving information, existing scholarly recommending systems lack the ability to retrieve this information from the scientific articles for generating knowledge repositories and providing problem-solving recommendations. To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel framework to build solution-oriented knowledge repositories and provide recommendations to solve given research problems. The framework consists of three modules: a semantics based information extraction module mining research problems and solutions from massive academic papers; a knowledge assessment module based on the heterogeneous bibliometric graph and a ranking algorithm; and a knowledge repository generation module to produce solution-oriented maps with recommendations. Based on the framework, a prototype scholarly solution support system is implemented. A case study is carried out in the research field of intrusion detection, and the results demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed method.
    Keywords:  bibliometrics; big scholarly data; knowledge repository; recommender system; text mining
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2019.00038
  43. PLoS One. 2021 ;16(3): e0247437
      This article investigates the technical efficiency in German higher education while accounting for possible heterogeneity in the production technology. We investigate whether a latent class model would identify the different sub-disciplines of life sciences in a sample of biology and agricultural units based on technological differences. We fit a latent class stochastic frontier model to estimate the parameters of an output distance function formulation of the production technology to investigate if a technological separation is meaningful along sub-disciplinary lines. We apply bootstrapping techniques for model validation. Our analysis relies on evaluating a unique dataset that matches information on higher educational institutions provided by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany with the bibliometric information extracted from the ISI Web of Science Database. The estimates indicate that neglecting to account for the possible existence of latent classes leads to a biased perception of efficiency. A classification into a research-focused and teaching-focused decision-making unit improves model fit compared to the pooled stochastic frontier model. Additionally, research-focused units have a higher median technical efficiency than teaching-focused units. As the research focus is more prevalent in the biology subsample an analysis not considering the potential existence of latent classes might misleadingly give the appearance of a higher mean efficiency of biology. In fact, we find no evidence of a difference in the mean technical efficiencies for German agricultural sciences and biology using the latent class model.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247437
  44. Sci Transl Med. 2021 03 10. pii: eabe7189. [Epub ahead of print]13(584):
      The COVID-19 pandemic halted research operations at academic medical centers. This shutdown has adversely affected research infrastructure, the current research workforce, and the research pipeline. We discuss the impact of the pandemic on overall research operations, examine its disproportionate effect on underrepresented minority researchers, and provide concrete strategies to reverse these losses.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1126/scitranslmed.abe7189
  45. PLoS One. 2021 ;16(3): e0247553
      Journalists' health and science reporting aid the public's direct access to research through the inclusion of hyperlinks leading to original studies in peer-reviewed journals. While this effort supports the US-government mandate that research be made widely available, little is known about what research journalists share with the public. This cross-sectional exploratory study characterises US-government-funded research on cancer that appeared most frequently in news coverage and how that coverage varied by cancer type, disease incidence and mortality rates. The subject of analysis was 11436 research articles (published in 2016) on cancer funded by the US government and 642 news stories mentioning at least one of these articles. Based on Altmetric data, researchers identified articles via PubMed and characterised each based on the news media attention received online. Only 1.88% (n = 213) of research articles mentioning US government-funded cancer research included at least one mention in an online news publication. This is in contrast to previous research that found 16.8% (n = 1925) of articles received mention by online mass media publications. Of the 13 most common cancers in the US, 12 were the subject of at least one news mention; only urinary and bladder cancer received no mention. Traditional news sources included significantly more mentions of research on common cancers than digital native news sources. However, a general discrepancy exists between cancers prominent in news sources and those with the highest mortality rate. For instance, lung cancer accounted for the most deaths annually, while melanoma led to 56% less annual deaths; however, journalists cited research regarding these cancers nearly equally. Additionally, breast cancer received the greatest coverage per estimated annual death, while pancreatic cancer received the least coverage per death. Findings demonstrated a continued misalignment between prevalent cancers and cancers mentioned in online news media. Additionally, cancer control and prevention received less coverage from journalists than other cancer continuum stages, highlighting a continued underrepresentation of prevention-focused research. Results revealed a need for further scholarship regarding the role of journalists in research dissemination.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247553
  46. Front Big Data. 2019 ;2 41
      Citation analysis is one of the most commonly used methods in academic assessments. Up to now, most of academic assessments are based on English literature, ignoring the fact that the role of Chinese papers in academic assessments has become increasingly indispensable. Therefore, to give full play to the role of Chinese literature in academic assessments is an urgent task of current academic circle. Based on Chinese academic data from ScholarSpace, i.e., 82826 Chinese computer science journal papers, we conduct a comprehensive assessment of academic influence from the perspectives of fields, journals and institutions, in order to achieve a better understanding of the development of Chinese computer literature in the past 60 years. We find that Chinese scholars tend to cite papers in English, discover evolution trend of fields, journals and institutions, and call on journals, institutions, and scholars to strengthen their cooperation.
    Keywords:  Chinese academic data; Chinese literature; ScholarSpace; citation analysis; computer science
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fdata.2019.00041