bims-evares Biomed News
on Evaluation of research
Issue of 2019‒02‒17
27 papers selected by
Thomas Krichel
Open Library Society


  1. J Biomed Inform. 2019 Feb 09. pii: S1532-0464(19)30041-3. [Epub ahead of print] 103123
      Quantifying scientific impact of researchers and journals relies largely on citation counts, despite the acknowledged limitations of this approach. The need for more suitable alternatives has prompted research into developing advanced metrics, such as h-index and Relative Citation Ratio (RCR), as well as better citation categorization schemes to capture the various functions that citations serve in a publication. One such scheme involves citation sentiment: whether a reference paper is cited positively (agreement with the findings of the reference paper), negatively (disagreement), or neutrally. The ability to classify citation function in this manner can be viewed as a first step toward a more fine-grained bibliometrics. In this study, we compared several approaches, varying in complexity, for classification of citation sentiment in clinical trial publications. Using a corpus of 285 discussion sections from as many publications (a total of 4,182 citations), we developed a rule-based method as well as supervised machine learning models based on support vector machines (SVM) and two variants of deep neural networks; namely, convolutional neural network (CNN) and bidirectional long short-term memory (BiLSTM). A CNN model augmented with hand-crafted features yielded the best performance (0.882 accuracy and 0.721 macro-F1 on held-out set). Our results show that baseline performances of traditional supervised learning algorithms and deep neural network architectures are similar and that hand-crafted features based on sentiment dictionaries and rhetorical structure allow neural network approaches to outperform traditional machine learning approaches for this task. We make the rule-based method and the best-performing neural network model publicly available at: https://github.com/kilicogluh/clinical-citation-sentiment.
    Keywords:  Citation analysis; Natural language processing; Neural networks; Sentiment analysis; Supervised machine learning
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbi.2019.103123
  2. BJU Int. 2019 Feb 12.
      OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the landscape of retractions of literature and determine the prevalence of research misconduct in the field of Urology.METHODS: Three databases (PUBMED, EMBASE, Retraction Watch) were queried for all retracted studies of urologic topics in both urologic and non-urologic journals from April 1999 to March 2018. Two reviewers screened the records and determined the final list of articles to be included in the analysis.
    RESULTS: 138 articles met the inclusion criteria. Over 80% of retractions occurred after 2009. Retractions originated from 76 different journals (13 urologic journals), and 28 countries. The most common reasons for retraction were plagiarism (28%), fake peer review (20%), error (20%), and falsification of data (13%). Misconduct accounted for 2/3 of the retractions (n=93). A large watermark, indicating retraction of the article, was present in 75% of the manuscripts. Articles were cited a total of 4,454 times, 38% of citations happened after retraction. The majority of retracted articles related to urologic oncology (70%). The highest number of retractions for an individual author was five. Rates of retraction among popular urologic journals since 2010 have increased but remain a small part of all publications: BJU International (0.189%), World Journal of Urology (0.132%), European Urology (0.058%), Urology (0.047%), and Journal of Urology (0.024%).
    CONCLUSION: Retractions of urologic literature, similar to retractions of other biomedical literature, have been rising over the last decade. The majority of these retractions stem from research misconduct. Despite retractions, flawed articles continued to be cited. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/bju.14706
  3. Oncol Nurs Forum. 2019 Mar 01. 46(2): 143-145
      The impact factor can undervalue the importance of smaller, specialized journals, and no single metric can serve as a perfect assessment of a journal's value or worth. This article provides a brief overview of various publication metrics, including the Scopus CiteScore, Eigenfactor®, and Altmetric attention score, using examples from the Oncology Nursing Forum. It also addresses the use of the Oncology Nursing Forum as a resource for research and answering clinical questions.
    Keywords:  citations; impact factor; metrics; research
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1188/19.ONF.143-145
  4. Nature. 2019 Feb;566(7743): 182
      
    Keywords:  Environmental sciences; Funding
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-00549-4
  5. PLoS One. 2019 ;14(2): e0212286
      Assessing the success and performance of researchers is a difficult task, as their grant output is influenced by a series of factors, including seniority, gender and geographical location of their host institution. In order to assess the effects of these factors, we analysed the publication and citation outputs, using Scopus and Web of Science, and the collaboration networks of European Research Council (ERC) starting (junior) and advanced (senior) grantees. For this study, we used a cohort of 355 grantees from the Life Sciences domain of years 2007-09. While senior grantees had overall greater publication output, junior grantees had a significantly greater pre-post grant award increase in their overall number of publications and in those on which they had last authorship. The collaboration networks size and the number of sub-communities increased for all grantees, although more pronounced for juniors, as they departed from smaller and more compact pre-award co-authorship networks. Both junior and senior grantees increased the size of the community within which they were collaborating in the post-award period. Pre-post grant award performance of grantees was not related to gender, although male junior grantees had more publications than female grantees before and after the grant award. Junior grantees located in lower research-performing countries published less and had less diverse collaboration networks than their peers located in higher research-performing countries. Our study suggests that research environment has greater influence on post-grant award publications than gender especially for junior grantees. Also, collaboration networks may be a useful complement to publication and citation outputs for assessing post-grant research performance, especially for grantees who already have a high publication output and who get highly competitive grants such as those from ERC.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212286
  6. J Nepal Health Res Counc. 2019 Jan 28. 16(41): 475-478
      Impact factor, which is a measure of the frequency of citation of articles published in a journal over a specified time, measures the rank or importance of a journal.  There is a trend towards publication of high quality research in journals with high impact factor. This paper has outlined the importance, method of calculation, clinical implications, pitfalls and financial issues related to the impact factor of medical journals.
  7. Sci Total Environ. 2019 Feb 25. pii: S0048-9697(18)34283-9. [Epub ahead of print]653 1168-1185
      Riparian vegetation is a crucial component of fluvial systems and serves multiple socio-ecological functions. The objective of this review is to follow the scientific trajectory of studies of riparian vegetation throughout history and across regions and fields of knowledge. Such a synthesis is challenging because riparian vegetation is an open co-constructed socio-ecological system at the crossroads of the biosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere and anthroposphere; thus, it exhibits a wide range of ecological patterns and functioning depending on climatic, morphological and land-use contexts. To address this, we used qualitative and quantitative approaches in our review of the scientific literature. From the scientific perspective, how riparian vegetation is studied has changed over time (e.g. development of modeling and geomatic approaches) and varies among fluvial systems and geographic areas (e.g. its relation to groundwater is usually studied more in Oceania and Asia than on other continents). This review revealed the lack of a single and well-identified scientific community that focuses on riparian vegetation. This is probably due to the nature of the subject, which includes diverse fields of knowledge and several applied issues: biodiversity, forestry, water quality, hydromorphology, restoration, ecology, etc. Some topics are actively regenerated (e.g. biogeomorphological approaches) and others are emerging, which reflects general trends in ecology (e.g. functional approaches). The literature review indicates that a substantial amount of knowledge already exists; therefore, a major priority of our study is to produce a clear and integrative understanding of riparian zone functioning to address the inherent complexity of these zones and remain valid across a wide diversity of geographical contexts. It is also essential to develop detailed analysis of the sociocultural dimension of riparian vegetation to understand the ecology of riparian zones and to improve riparian vegetation management according to local recommendations in order to maintain and improve its functions and services in the face of global changes.
    Keywords:  Floodplain management and restoration; Fluvial system; Land uses; Riparian forest; River ecology
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.383
  8. Molecules. 2019 Feb 12. pii: E640. [Epub ahead of print]24(3):
      Academic journals have published a large number of papers in the therapeutic nuclear medicine (NM) research field in the last 10 years. Despite this, a literature analysis has never before been made to point out the research interest in therapeutic radionuclides (RNs). For this reason, the present study aims specifically to analyze the research output on therapeutic radiometals from 2008 to 2018, with intent to quantify and identify global trends in scientific literature and emphasize the interdisciplinary nature of this research field. The data search targeted conventional (131I, 90Y, 177Lu, 188Re, 186Re, 153Sm, 89Sr, 186Er) and emergent (67Cu, 47Sc, 223Ra, 166Ho, 161Tb, 149Tb, 212Pb/212Bi, 225Ac, 213Bi, 211At, 117mSn) RNs. Starting from this time frame, authors have analyzed and interpreted this scientific trend quantitatively first, and qualitatively after.
    Keywords:  radionuclide therapy; therapeutic radiometals; therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules24030640
  9. J Nurs Scholarsh. 2019 Feb 14.
      PURPOSE: Faculty productivity related to research and scholarship is assessed in schools of nursing throughout the world. The purpose of this study was to examine the publication productivity of nursing faculty at each academic rank and in both tenure and nontenure tracks in selected schools of nursing across the United States.DESIGN: This was a descriptive study of publications and the h-index of nursing faculty.
    METHODS: Publication and citation data and the h-index for faculty (N = 1,354) in 18 schools of nursing were obtained from the Scopus database.
    FINDINGS: Overall, the number of publications and citations and the h-index of faculty increased at higher academic ranks. The median number of publications for tenure track faculty was 13 for assistant professors, 33 for associate professors, and 81 for full professors. Citation medians ranged from 80.5 for assistant professors, to 378 for associate professors, to 1,401 for full professors. The median h-index was 4 for assistant professors, 10 for associate professors, and 20 for full professors. Significant differences were found across academic ranks and between tenure and nontenure track faculty.
    CONCLUSIONS: The findings provide the first documentation of scholarly productivity of nursing faculty, as measured by number of publications and citations and by h-index, across schools of nursing in the United States.
    CLINICAL RELEVANCE: These findings can be used as benchmarks by appointment, promotion, and tenure committees and by faculty for self-assessment.
    Keywords:  Citations; faculty evaluation; h-index; nursing faculty; publications; scholarship
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/jnu.12463
  10. J Spinal Cord Med. 2019 Feb 14. 1-8
      OBJECTIVE: We conducted a citation analysis in order to catalog and pay tribute to the 100 most influential clinical research articles in traumatic spinal cord injury.DESIGN: The Thomson Reuters Web of Science was searched in a two-step process without time period limitations. Review articles were excluded. In the first stage of data extraction, a Boolean query was used to identify the top 100 most cited clinical papers on traumatic spinal cord injury. One hundred and seven keywords were manually chosen and extracted from titles and abstracts. A second Boolean query used these keywords to broaden search results. The top 100 articles from this second stage search comprised the final list.
    OUTCOME MEASURES: For each article, measures evaluated were number of citations, average number of citations per year, time elapsed before first citation, and time elapsed until the year in which each article received its respective highest number of citations in a one-year period.
    RESULTS: 119,991 articles were found in the second stage search. The top 100 most cited articles meeting inclusion criteria were identified within the first 2,104 results. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation was the most represented journal, with 20 of the top 100 articles. The top 100 list averaged 255 citations per article. The most highly cited article was the NASCIS 2 trial by Bracken et al., cited 1500 times, which investigated the efficacy of methylprednisolone or naloxone for spinal cord injury.
    CONCLUSION: Clinical research in traumatic spinal cord injury has grown over time, expanding to encompass rehabilitation and experimental therapies in addition to acute management trials. The list may serve as an archive and reference for further studies in this field.
    Keywords:  Acute; Bibliometric study; Citation analysis; Spinal cord injury; Traumatic
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/10790268.2019.1576426
  11. Sci Total Environ. 2019 Feb 25. pii: S0048-9697(18)34312-2. [Epub ahead of print]653 765-775
      In recent years, the renewed interest in environmental issues has gradually required manufacturers to simultaneously pursue a more rational use of resources and a reduction in wastes production. New strategies, technologies and organisational innovations must be therefore conceived to "create more value with less impact" (WBCSD, 2010). An interesting and promising perspective for achieving internal efficiency, market effectiveness and environmental eco-efficiency is that of integrating the environmental variable in the Lean Production (LP) paradigm. Scholars and practitioners have been working for some years in this direction of eco-innovation. The present article aims at obtaining a quali/quantitative overview of Lean and Clean(er) production (L&C) research through a bibliometric and network analysis, by using a scientific literature database; in particular, it investigates how Clean(er) Production research and publications are progressively embedded in the field of LP, what are the main topics in this sub-field and common research themes. A comprehensive picture was made by analysing data concerning publications, authors, affiliations, and the countries of origin. Evolutionary profiles, major topics investigated, leading authors and collaborations have been reported. The results also reveal promising spaces for the development of L&C production research, in order to achieve economic and environmental benefits.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; Cleaner production; Green manufacturing; Lean manufacturing; Lean production; Social Network Analysis
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.10.412
  12. Ann Biomed Eng. 2019 Feb 14.
      In academia, manuscripts serve as an important component of career development. The past several years have seen heightened evaluation of the role of the gender gap in career advancement, as well as other bibliometric changes in publications. We therefore analyzed authorship and publication trends in the Annals of Biomedical Engineering over the past three decades (one complete year of manuscripts for each decade; 1986, 1996, 2006, and 2016). The variables analyzed were number of authors per manuscript, numerical position of the corresponding author, number of collaborating institutions and countries, number of references, and number of citations per manuscript. The gender of both the first and corresponding authors was identified and analyzed over time and by region. Globally, the percentage of female first and corresponding authors significantly increased from 0% in 1986 to 28.6% (p = 0.003) and 20.4% (p = 0.0009), respectively, in 2016. Although there were significant differences regarding female first and corresponding author over time, they did not vary by region of origin (p = 0.5 and 0.2, respectively). Overall, these findings highlight the improvements made and the challenges that still exist related to publishing within the bioengineering field.
    Keywords:  Author; Bibliometric analysis; Female; Gender; Publication trends
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10439-019-02222-3
  13. BMJ Open. 2019 Feb 13. 9(2): e024436
      OBJECTIVES: The proportion of women engaged in clinical research has increased over time. However, it is unclear if women and men contribute to the same extent during the conduct of research and, if so, if they are equally rewarded by a strategic first or last author position. We aim to describe the prevalence of women authors of original articles published 15 years apart and to compare the research contributions and author positions according to gender.DESIGN: Repeated cross-sectional study.
    SETTING: Published original articles.
    PARTICIPANTS: 1910 authors of 223 original articles published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2000 and 2015.
    PRIMARY AND SECONDARY OUTCOMES MEASURES: Self-reported contributions to 10 aspects of the article (primary) and author position on the byline.
    RESULTS: The proportion of women authors increased from 32% (n=243) to 41% (n=469) between 2000 and 2015 (p<0.0001). In 2000, women authors were less frequently involved than men in the conception and design (134 (55%) vs 323 (61%); p=0.0256), critical revision (171 (70%) vs 426 (81%); p=0.0009), final approval (196 (81%) vs 453 (86%); p=0.0381) and obtaining of funding (39 (16%) vs 114 (22%); p=0.0245). Women were more frequently involved than men in administration and logistics (85 (35%) vs 137 (26%); p=0.0188) and data collection (121 (50%) vs 242 (46%); p=0.0532), but they were similarly involved in the analysis and interpretation of data, drafting of the manuscript, provision of materials/patients and statistical expertise. Women were less often last authors than men (22 (9%) vs 82 (16%); p=0.0102). These gender differences persisted in 2015.
    CONCLUSIONS: The representation of women among authors of medical articles increased notably between 2000 and 2015, but still remained below 50%. Women's roles differed from those of men with no change over time.
    Keywords:  authorship; gender; publication; research
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-024436
  14. Int J Radiat Biol. 2019 Feb 12. 1-28
      PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the global scientific publication of biological research of low dose radiation for the past 30 years and provide the insights into the characteristics of research activities and major topics regarding to biological effects of low dose radiation exposure.MATERIALS AND METHODS: We bibliometrically investigated the biological research publication of radiation exposure less than 100 mSv. References published from 1987 to 2016 were achieved from the Scopus database and filtered by several criteria such as publication types, research fields, and radiation dose range.
    RESULTS: Total 753 references were assembled for the bibliometric analysis on the biological studies of radiation effect less than 100 mSv. It provided fundamental knowledge of research, including production tendency, contribution, impact journals, and major research themes. Based on the keyword analysis, we found that specific topics on the biological response to radiation exposure have been changed from the examination of low dose radiation-induced phenomena to the investigation of how to induce a physiological response. In addition, featured articles showed the various views on the biological effects of radiation less than 100 mSv in 30 years publication, depending radiation doses and types.
    CONCLUSIONS: Continuous studies in large programs of low dose radiation led to the increment of research achievements in accordance with societal needs in radiation safety regulation for health protection. Our findings can surely help radiation researchers to gain insights and penetration in low dose risk research for radiation protection, and establish the further research direction.
    Keywords:  100 mSv; Bibliometric study; Biological effects; Low dose radiation; Research trends
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/09553002.2019.1552373
  15. J Med Internet Res. 2019 Feb 15. 21(2): e12644
      BACKGROUND: Over the past decade, clinical care has become globally dependent on information technology. The cybersecurity of health care information systems is now an essential component of safe, reliable, and effective health care delivery.OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to provide an overview of the literature at the intersection of cybersecurity and health care delivery.
    METHODS: A comprehensive search was conducted using PubMed and Web of Science for English-language peer-reviewed articles. We carried out chronological analysis, domain clustering analysis, and text analysis of the included articles to generate a high-level concept map composed of specific words and the connections between them.
    RESULTS: Our final sample included 472 English-language journal articles. Our review results revealed that majority of the articles were focused on technology: Technology-focused articles made up more than half of all the clusters, whereas managerial articles accounted for only 32% of all clusters. This finding suggests that nontechnological variables (human-based and organizational aspects, strategy, and management) may be understudied. In addition, Software Development Security, Business Continuity, and Disaster Recovery Planning each accounted for 3% of the studied articles. Our results also showed that publications on Physical Security account for only 1% of the literature, and research in this area is lacking. Cyber vulnerabilities are not all digital; many physical threats contribute to breaches and potentially affect the physical safety of patients.
    CONCLUSIONS: Our results revealed an overall increase in research on cybersecurity and identified major gaps and opportunities for future work.
    Keywords:  bibliometric review; cybersecurity; health care; literature analysis; text mining
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2196/12644
  16. Clin Kidney J. 2019 Feb;12(1): 6-18
      Background: The number of citations of a scientific article is considered a weight of that work in the field of interest. Bibliometric analysis of the most cited articles conducted in some medical disciplines has identified the most relevant scientific contributions that pushed forward knowledge and clinical practice of that discipline.Methods: We conducted a bibliometric analysis of the most cited articles in nephrology, by extracting relevant words that identify issues of nephrological interest and querying the Google Scholar database. A rank with the 100 most cited articles was obtained, based on the absolute number of citations. Articles were clustered in different areas of interest.
    Results: Word(s) extracted from the Google Scholar database that restituted at least 100 000 hits were 50. The extracted 100 most cited articles collected cumulatively >285 000 citations. Nine subcategories were identified and the most populated one was 'Renal function assessment' (16 articles and 68 000 citations, 24% of total). The other relevant group of articles (16, with 46 652 citations) belonged to the category 'Randomized trials and pharmacology'. Almost 70% of the articles in the top 100 were published by eight major international journals. The top 100 list included 62 articles generated from USA scientists and the author with higher number of articles was A.S. Levey (10).
    Conclusions: The top 100 list of articles in nephrology helps delineate the major interests of this medical discipline. Assessment of renal functions, probably for its multidisciplinary relevance, is the heaviest topic, based on number of citations.
    Keywords:  Google Scholar; bibliometric analysis; citations; nephrology; top 100 most cited articles
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1093/ckj/sfy033
  17. J Hand Surg Asian Pac Vol. 2019 Mar;24(1): 36-44
      BACKGROUND: To date, little is known about the characteristics of highly cited studies in hand surgery compared with other orthopaedic subspecialties. We aimed to assess the position of hand surgery within the orthopedic surgery literature.METHODS: We conducted a bibliographic analysis using the Web of Science database to review 1,568 articles published between January 2012 and December 2012 in 4 relevant general orthopedic and 2 hand surgery journals. We used the number of citations within 3 years of publication to measure the impact of each paper. To analyze prognostic factors using logistic regression analysis, we extracted data on orthopedic subspecialty, published journal, location of authorship, and type of study for all articles. For clinical studies, we also recorded details on study design and sample size.
    RESULTS: Of eligible hand surgery articles (n = 307), the majority (62%) were case reports/series. Only 19% were comparative studies, comprising a significantly smaller proportion of comparative studies from other subspecialties in general orthopedic journals. Systematic reviews/meta-analyses generated a significantly higher number of average citations, whereas educational reviews were consistently cited less frequently than other study types (14.9 and 6.1 average citations, respectively). Being published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, American volume, having authorship in North America or Europe and Australia, focusing on subspecialties like hip & knee, sports, or shoulder, utilizing a comparative or randomized clinical trial study design, and having a larger sample size increased the odds of receiving more citations.
    CONCLUSIONS: Clinical studies related to hand surgery published in general orthopedic journals are most often of lower quality study design. Having a larger sample size or using a comparative study or randomized clinical trial design can improve the quality of study and may ultimately increase the impact factor of hand surgery journals.
    Keywords:  Bibliography; Journal impact factor; Orthopedics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1142/S2424835519500073
  18. PLoS One. 2019 ;14(2): e0210707
      This paper presents global research trends involving highly cited articles on ecosystem services from 1981 to 2017 based on a bibliometric analysis of such articles from the SCI-E and SSCI databases of the Web of Science. The analysis revealed that there were 132 highly cited articles, most of which were published between 2005 and 2014. Based on author keywords, the term ecosystem services was strongly linked to biodiversity. The top three journals in terms of total number of highly cited articles published were Ecological Economics, PNAS, and Ecological Indicators. Despite ranking sixth overall, Science ranked first in both impact factor and total citations per article. The US, UK, Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden were the top five most productive and cooperative countries in the world based on total number of highly cited articles and co-authorship network, respectively. The US was highly connected to Canada, the Netherlands, China and the UK. Stockholm University and Stanford University were the most productive institutions in Europe and North America, respectively. Stanford University is associated with many scholars in the field of ecosystem services research because of the InVEST model. Robert Costanza was the most prolific and highly cited author, the latter being largely due to the first valuation of the world's ecosystem services and natural capital, he and his co-authors published in 1997 in Nature. Terrestrial, urban, and forest ecosystems were the top types of ecosystems assessed. Regulating and provisioning services were the major ecosystem services studied. Quantitative and qualitative assessments were the main research focus. Most of these highly cited studies on ecosystem services are done on areas geographically located in North America and Europe.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0210707
  19. Neurochirurgie. 2019 Feb 06. pii: S0028-3770(18)30330-8. [Epub ahead of print]
      Bibliometrics are methods used to quantitatively analyze the scientific literature. The application of bibliometrics in neurosurgery is emerging and has not yet been studied in the French neurosurgical community. In France, the most used statistical method is named SIGAPS; the scores are based on the position of the author and the impact factor of the journal. The SIGAPS score, which can be calculated for a research team or an individual, impacts the public financial support of university hospitals in France. We analyzed retrospectively the publication productivity and the SIGAPS score of university neurosurgery departments in France for the period 2009-2016. This was supplemented by a list of current academic research protocols granted by the Minister of Health. The SIGAPS score is higher in large university hospitals even though all teams are dedicated to publishing more in the traditional neurosurgery journals (Neurosurgery, Journal of Neurosurgery, World Neurosurgery, J Neuro-oncology, Neuro oncology, Eur Spine J). Of note, the national Neurochirurgie journal (publishing in French and English) is progressively improving its impact factor (0.8). The most common themes are functional neurosurgery, neuro-oncology and spine. There are 14 on-going national multicenter research programs, 4 of them focused on the health economics of treatment innovations. These data provide the most accurate available snapshot of the scholarly efforts of all the French university neurosurgery departments. It is based on a national statistics method (SIGAPS). For future evaluation, it should be combined with internationally available parameters such as the h-index and m-quotient. Publication productivity has broad implications for the success of both academic departments and individual faculty members and their financial support.
    Keywords:  Academic productivity; Bibliometrics; Bibliométrie; Neurochirurgie; Neurosurgery; Publications; Recherche académique; SIGAPS; Score SIGAPS; h-index
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuchi.2018.08.006
  20. Tunis Med. 2018 Oct-Nov;96(10-11):96(10-11): 636-646
      BACKGROUND:   The management of the cardiovascular diseases, main public health problem in Tunisia, is generating many difficulties that a socially responsible research should reflect them. The aim of this study is to assess dimensions of public health of Tunisian research on the cardiovascular diseases during thirty last years.METHODS: we conducted a bibliometric study relating to the public health information of the Tunisian cardiovascular papers indexed in the Medline database between January 1st 1988 and December 31st 2017. The following qualifiers were selected to define the public health dimension of paper: "epidemiology", "mortality", "statistics and numerical data", "economy", and "prevention and control".
    RESULTS: During thirty years (1988-2017), 176 references were identified and only 136 Tunisian publications were retained following the application of the inclusion criteria (first author affiliated in a Tunisian structure of health or research). The two medical specialties of "cardiology" and "Preventive medicine and Community" produced 47% of these articles. The selected publications were mainly original articles, monocentric studies, analytical, and written in French language for the national journal "La Tunisie Medicale". Among the 136 selected articles, 34 (25%) explored the ischemic heart diseases. "Epidemiology" and the "Prevention/Control" were two dimensions of the "Public health" the most studied in the Tunisian publications on the cardiovascular diseases, respectively in 84% and 44% of the cases.
    CONCLUSION: The Tunisian publications in the cardiovascular field accompanied the epidemiologic transition along the three last decades. While they were focusing on the epidemiology and the prevention of the ischemic heart diseases. Other dimensions of public health must be treated on the set of the cardiovascular diseases, such as the economics and etiologics studies.
  21. Tunis Med. 2018 Oct-Nov;96(10-11):96(10-11): 678-687
      BACKGROUND: In an article published in the journal "La Tunisie médicale" in 1972, Professor Sleim Ammar, a visionary North African psychiatrist, announced that "suicide is a public health problem" in the Maghreb.OBJECTIVES: This work, on the one hand, aims to describe the profile of Maghreb publications indexed in the Medline database, on the topic of suicide during the last forty years, and on the other hand to extract the Maghreb specificities of the epidemiology and the suicide management, used as tracer of Maghreb mental health.
    METHODS: This is a systematic medical review, combined with a bibliometric study, on the theme of "suicide" in Maghreb region. We submitted a distinct and clear search term to the Medline database, via its online interface, "PubMed", on May 16, 2018. In addition to the description of the bibliometric characteristics of these Maghreb studies, we synthesized the analysis of their content by tables detailing the documented facts and recommended proposals.
    RESULTS: Out of 32 Maghreb articles on suicide, selected for this literature review, 18 were Moroccan and 13 were Tunisian. Two-thirds of them published after 2010. The snapshot of Maghreb research indexed on Medline, on suicide, was the following: a publication written in French, focused on the attempts of suicide, with a monocentric and descriptive methodological approach, written by a psychiatry team and published in an "open access" African journal. The recommendations of these North African publications on suicide were often general and not operational.
    CONCLUSION: the North African scientific research on suicide remains unproductive and of low methodological quality. The focus of this research towards primary suicide prevention, as part of a comprehensive public health approach, would be essential for the promotion of mental health in the North African region.
  22. Lancet. 2019 02 09. pii: S0140-6736(18)32995-7. [Epub ahead of print]393(10171): 550-559
      BACKGROUND: Clinical and preclinical studies have shown that there are sex-based differences at the genetic, cellular, biochemical, and physiological levels. Despite this, numerous studies have shown poor levels of inclusion of female populations into medical research. These disparities in sex inclusion in research are further complicated by the absence of sufficient reporting and analysis by sex of study populations. Disparities in the inclusion of the sexes in medical research substantially reduce the utility of the results of such research for the entire population. The absence of sex-related reporting are problematical for the translation of research from the preclinical to clinical and applied health settings. Large-scale studies are needed to identify the extent of sex-related reporting and where disparities are more prevalent. In addition, while several studies have shown the dearth of female researchers in science, few have evaluated whether a scarcity of women in science might be related to disparities in sex inclusion and reporting. We aimed to do a cross-disciplinary analysis of the degree of sex-related reporting across the health sciences-from biomedical, to clinical, and public health research-and the role of author gender in sex-related reporting.METHODS: This bibliometric analysis analysed sex-related reporting in medical research examining more than 11·5 million papers indexed in Web of Science and PubMed between 1980 and 2016 and using sex-related Medical Subject Headings as a proxy for sex reporting. For papers that were published between 2008 and 2016 and could be matched with PubMed, we assigned a gender to first and last authors on the basis of their names, according to our gender assignment algorithm. We removed papers for which we could not determine the gender of either the first or last author. We grouped papers into three disciplinary categories (biomedical research, clinical medicine, and public health). We used descriptive statistics and regression analyses (controlling for the number of authors and representation of women in specific diseases, countries, continents, year, and specialty areas) to study associations between the gender of the authors and sex-related reporting.
    FINDINGS: Between Jan 1, 1980, and Dec 31, 2016, sex-related reporting increased from 59% to 67% in clinical medicine and from 36% to 69% in public health research. But for biomedical research, sex remains largely under-reported (31% in 2016). Papers with female first and last authors had an increased probability of reporting sex, with an odds ratio of 1·26 (95% CI 1·24 to 1·27), and sex-related reporting was associated with publications in journals with low journal impact factors. For publications in 2016, sex-related reporting of both male and female is associated with a reduction of -0·51 (95% CI -0·54 to -0·47) in journal impact factors.
    INTERPRETATION: Gender disparities in the scientific workforce and scarcity of policies on sex-related reporting at the journal and institutional level could inhibit effective research translation from bench to clinical studies. Diversification in the scientific workforce and in the research populations-from cell lines, to rodents, to humans-is essential to produce the most rigorous and effective medical research.
    FUNDING: Canada Research Chairs.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)32995-7
  23. Ann Surg Treat Res. 2019 Feb;96(2): 47-52
      Purpose: Since endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) was first introduced in 1991, it has undergone rapid technical and quantitative developments. We analyzed the characteristics and trends of EVAR research through bibliometric analysis.Methods: Comprehensive online searches focused on EVAR were performed from January 1994 to August 2017. The following information was collected: title, year of publication, countries' contribution, authorship, subspecialty, institution, subject category, and top 10 cited articles.
    Results: A significant increase was demonstrated globally in the number of annual publications on EVAR. The highest number of publications was from the United States (n = 849, 35.08%), followed by England (n = 343, 14.17%), and the institutions with highest number of publications were Stanford University (n = 61, 2.52%) and Skane University Hospital Malmo (n = 45, 1.86%). The Journal of Vascular Surgery published approximately one quarter of the total publications. Vascular surgeons produced the most publications (n = 1871, 78.14%), followed by radiologists (n = 377, 15.58%) and cardiologists (n = 73, 3.02%). The most studied topics on EVAR were complications and procedures. The number of publications on complex EVAR and EVAR in juxtarenal aneurysm has increased more from 2013 to 2017 (5.1%, 9.5%) compared with from 1998 to 2002 (2.1%, 1.8%).
    Conclusion: Our bibliometric analysis showed the characteristics and trends of publications on EVAR over a period of 25 years. The results of the bibliometric analysis revealed the quantitative improvements of publications and the qualitative improvements in challenging EVAR.
    Keywords:  Aortic aneurysm abdominal; Bibliometrics; Endovascular procedure
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.4174/astr.2019.96.2.47
  24. Tunis Med. 2018 Oct-Nov;96(10-11):96(10-11): 719-730
      INTRODUCTION: With the aim of rebuilding the memory of the specialty of Preventive Medicine and Community Medicine (MPC) in Tunisia, through its indexed scientific publications, the objective of this work was to describe the thematic and methodological profile of indexed scientific research, of this specialty over four decades.METHODS: This is a descriptive bibliometric study of MPC articles, indexed in the Medline database over a 40-year period (1975-2014), and based on their Medline Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS). All articles of which the first and / or last authors were MPC university hospital teachers, in one of Tunisia's four faculties of medicine, were included. The themes of the publications were defined through the major keywords (Majr), and categorized according to the following five groups: "non-communicable diseases", "communicable diseases", "violence and traumatisms", "management of health services" and "Research and pedagogy".
    RESULTS: Among 1664 articles captured by the Medline-based documentary request, 594 had as their first authors, teachers of the MPC specialty and 365 articles were eligible for study. The productivity of the specialty of MPC increased from 29 publications between 1975 and 1984, to 167 between 2005 and 2014. The magazine "La Tunisie Médicale" published 37.6% of the articles of this specialty. Four out of ten MPC papers referred to hospital structures and 35% of them were cross-sectional observational studies. Over the decades, an increase in research topics related to "non-communicable diseases" versus "communicable diseases" has been noted in MPC.
    CONCLUSION: In Tunisia, research in MPC has been relatively prolific and globally consistent with the health needs of the population (impacted by the epidemiological transition). The orientation of research projects towards community-based proposals, of high methodological level and mobilizing multidisciplinary teams, would be necessary for the improvement of the quality and relevance of publications in MPC.
  25. Health Res Policy Syst. 2019 Feb 11. 17(1): 18
      BACKGROUND: Worldwide, natural disasters have caused a large number of deaths and considerable morbidity. Nevertheless, limited information is available on how the health-related literature on natural disasters has evolved. The current study aims to assess the growth and pattern of health-related literature on natural disasters.METHOD: A bibliometric method was implemented using Scopus database for the period from 1900 to 2017. Keywords used in the search strategy were obtained from the classifications of natural disasters presented by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. The health component was determined by selecting the health-related subject areas in Scopus.
    RESULTS: In total, 9073 documents were retrieved. The annual number of publications showed a noticeable sharp increase after 2004. The retrieved documents received 97,605 citations, an average of 10.8 per document. The h-index of the retrieved documents was 113. Author keywords with the highest occurrence were 'earthquakes' followed by 'disaster medicine', 'disaster planning', 'tsunami', 'mental health', 'disaster preparedness', 'PTSD', 'emergency preparedness', and 'public health'. Authors from the United States of America contributed to 3127 (34.5%) publications and ranked first, followed by those from Japan (700; 7.7%) and China (636; 7.0%). When research output was standardised by Gross Domestic Product per capita, India ranked first, followed by China and the United States. The United Kingdom had the highest percentage of documents with international authors, followed by those from Switzerland and Canada. The Prehospital and Disaster Medicine journal published the most articles (636; 7.0%). The Sichuan University and its affiliated hospital contributed to 384 (7.0%) documents and ranked first in the field.
    CONCLUSION: The current baseline information on health-related literature on natural disasters showed that this field is growing rapidly but with inadequate international research collaboration. Research collaboration in this field needs to be strengthened to improve the global response to natural disasters in any place in the world. There is a need to expand the research focus in this field to include communicable and non-communicable diseases. Finally, the health effects of other natural disasters, such as floods, droughts and disease outbreaks, need to be addressed.
    Keywords:  Natural disasters; bibliometric analysis; health
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s12961-019-0418-1
  26. Tunis Med. 2018 Oct-Nov;96(10-11):96(10-11): 834-843
      BACKGROUND: As part of the preparatory work for the elaboration of a strategic plan for the development of scientific research in Mauritania, an overview of national biomedical research was recommended by the supervisory authorities.AIM: Describe the bibliometric profile of biomedical scientific publications in Mauritania, indexed in Medline database, over the past 25 years.
    METHODS: A bibliometric study was carried out on Medline Database covering the period from 1 January 1992 to 31 December 2016. Were retained, the scientific papers whose one of the author's address, at least, was a Mauritanian one. The fields of the Medline display format were used to describe the following items: authors, addresses, journal, language, article type, and Mesh terms. The assignment of a publication to an author was limited to the first and last position. Only first institutional affiliation mentioned in the authors' addresses was considered to classify the establishments' productivity. International co-operation has been studied through the compilation of all co-author addresses.
    RESULTS: Between 1992 and 2016, Medline had indexed 141 Mauritanian articles, 74 of them was published during the previous five-year period (2012-2016). These papers covered essentially the following disciplines: "Infectious diseases", "Community health", "Parasitology", "Veterinary Medicine" and "Marine Sciences" It mainly consist of an original article (79%), written in English (57%) and published without financial support (72%). Mauritanian articles have been published in 72 journals in 12 different countries. Three journals « Bulletin de la Société de Pathologie Exotique », « Pan African Medical Journal » and « Malaria journal » have accounted 23 % of the publications ; 36% of the papers have been published in French journals. The research subjects of the Mauritanian biomedical literature was carried out via 215 major keywords, five of them represented 22% of the publications: «Malaria», «HIV infections», «Anopheles»,  «Camels», and «Goat diseases »". For 112 scientific articles (79%), the first author were Mauritanian, as for the rest (n = 29) the authors were coming from 15 different countries, mainly from France, Senegal and the Arab Maghreb. In 48% of the articles, the affiliation of the first author was one of four following structures: « the National Hospital Centre in Nouakchott», «The National Center for Livestock and Veterinary Research», « the Faculty of Science and Technology » and «the National Institute for Research in Public Health». A partnership with an international team was noted for 40% of publications, particularly with France, Italy, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Tunisia.
    CONCLUSION: During the last past 25 year, the biomedical publication feature, inconsistently growing since 2012, has been characterizing by the adequacy of research themes with the population's health needs, an international visibility and an extensive networking with many foreign research structures. Strengthening Maghrebian collaboration in the fields of research training and Multi-centric research would be a fine support to the national dynamics of biomedical research.