bims-evares Biomed News
on Evaluation of research
Issue of 2021–02–07
35 papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society



  1. Heliyon. 2021 Jan;7(1): e06021
       Background: Citation count can be used as a key tool to assess the quality of the published literature and because of its immense advantages it is now widely used in ranking the articles on specific topics.
    Objective/hypothesis: To extract and assess the top cited work on repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) for depression treatment.
    Methods: Scopus Library Database was searched and two independent authors produced a list of 50 most cited articles on repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) for treatment of depression. All the relevant articles having key-terms within their titles, abstract and keywords were included in our search. Our list was categorized into two categories, "mixed" and "focused".
    Results: The articles in the produced list of top 50 most cited articles on rTMS for treatment of depression belong to the time period 1993-2012 with total citation count 12078. George MS was prominent in the list. 'Biological Psychiatry' published most number of articles (n = 13) among the list. Articles were categorized on the basis of primary population and intervention into 'Focused' and 'Mixed' categories.
    Limitations: Articles that were published before 1993 and after 2012 on rTMS for depression couldn't made it to the final list of top-50 most cited article.
    Conclusion: We attempted to conduct a topic-specific citation analysis considering the paucity of specified bibliometrics in medical literature. Our research provides an insight on emerging trends in rTMS for depression and highlights the characteristics, quality and dynamics of frequently cited articles in the field.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; Citation count; Depression; Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation; Treatment
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e06021
  2. J Foot Ankle Surg. 2020 Oct 29. pii: S1067-2516(20)30334-3. [Epub ahead of print]
      The aim of this study was to analyze the 100 most-cited articles on ankle arthroscopy. Using the keyword ankle arthroscopy, the 100 most-cited articles in the Web of Science database were analyzed. Original articles, reviews, clinical trials, and case reports were included in the study. The search period included studies conducted between the years 1990 and 2020. The number of citations of the 100 most-cited articles ranged from 56 to 225 (mean, 95.52). The total number of citations was 9552. Among the articles examined, most were produced in the United States of America. The American Journal of Sports Medicine was the journal in which the most-cited articles were more frequently published. The article topic that drew attention most was osteochondral defects. Ankle arthroscopy is a technique that is still open to development and is a current topic that should be studied. Analyzing the 100 most-cited articles, it can be seen that most studies are on osteochondral defects. More articles will increase scientific data and provide more realistic solutions to ankle problems.
    Keywords:  ankle arthroscopy; article; bibliometric analysis; citation; most cited
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1053/j.jfas.2020.08.028
  3. J Burn Care Res. 2021 Feb 02. pii: irab026. [Epub ahead of print]
      Traditional measures of scholarly impact (i.e., impact factor, citation rate) do not account for the role of social media in knowledge dissemination. The Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) tracks the online sharing activity of articles on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. All 285 original scientific articles published in Journal of Burn Care & Research and Burns from January to December 2017 were obtained from official journal websites. Article characteristics extracted include: AAS; number of Twitter, Facebook, and news outlet mentions; subject of study and study design; number of citations; number of authors and academic institutions; and others. The average AAS for all articles was 6.1 (SD: 48; Range: 0 to 611) in which 156 (55%) of those had Twitter mentions. The mean AAS for Journal of Burn Care & Research and Burns were 7.7 (SD: 54; Range: 0 to 536) and 5.3 (SD: 45; Range: 0 to 611), respectively. There was a weak, positive correlation between AAS and citation count for all articles (ρ = 0.12; p = 0.049), and this finding was consistent for Journal of Burn Care & Research (ρ = 0.21; p = 0.039) and Burns (ρ = 0.15; p = 0.038) individually. The weak correlation between the two metrics supports that AAS and citation count capture the attention of different audiences. In addition, studies discussing skin grafting were associated with higher average AAS (β: 29 [95% CI: 4.2 to 54]; p = 0.022). Overall, our findings support using both AAS and traditional bibliometrics to assess article impact.
    Keywords:  AAS; Altmetric Attention Score; Altmetrics; Citations; Social Media
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1093/jbcr/irab026
  4. J Cannabis Res. 2019 Jun 07. 1(1): 4
       BACKGROUND: Cannabis, cannabinoids and endocannabinoids are heavily investigated topics with many articles published every year. We aimed to identify the 100 most cited manuscripts among the vast literature and analyze their contents.
    METHODS: Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection was searched to identify the 100 most cited relevant manuscripts, which were analyzed with reference to (1) authorship, (2) institution, (3) country, (4) document type, (5) journal, (6) publication year, (7) WoS category, and (8) citation count. Semantic content and citation data of the manuscripts were analyzed with VOSviewer.
    RESULTS: The most cited manuscripts were published between 1986 and 2016, with the majority being published in the 2000s (n = 51). The number of citations for the top 100 articles ranged from 469 to 3651, with a median citation count of 635.5. The most prolific authors were Vincenzo Di Marzo (n = 11) and Daniele Piomelli (n = 11). The major contributing countries were USA (n = 49), Italy (n = 22), UK (n = 19), and France (n = 11). The most prolific institutions were University of California (n = 14), National Research Council of Italy (n = 12) and National Institutes of Health USA (n = 12). The manuscripts consisted of original articles (n = 75), reviews (n = 24) and a note (n = 1). The most dominant journal was Nature (n = 15). The major WoS categories associated were Multidisciplinary sciences (n = 31), Neurosciences (n = 20), Pharmacology / Pharmacy (n = 16), and General / Internal Medicine (n = 11).
    CONCLUSIONS: The top-ranked manuscripts among the 100 were concerning analgesia, weight loss, long-term potentiation, depolarization-induced suppression of inhibition, opiates and other topics. Cannabinoid type 1 (CB1) receptor was studied by more of the top 100 papers in comparison to cannabinoid type 2 (CB2) receptor. The most frequently mentioned chemicals in these publications were 2-arachidonoylglycerol, tetrahydrocannabinol, and anandamide. Together, these manuscripts comprise the most highly cited publications in the topic, literally the molecular neuroscience at its "high".
    Keywords:  Bibliometrics; Cannabis; Citation analysis; Endocannabinoid; Molecular neuroscience; VOSviewer
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s42238-019-0004-y
  5. Neurosurg Rev. 2021 Feb 01.
      There has been a steady increase of vestibular schwannoma (VS) research in the body of literature. To delineate the most impactful works on VS, a bibliometric analysis is warranted. The Thomson Reuters Web of Sciences database was queried to identify all articles on VS published to June 2020. The articles were sorted in descending order of the number of citations. Titles and abstracts of the top 100 most-cited articles were screened to identify the research area, publication year, author, and country of publication. Our query yielded 6477 research publications. The 100 most-cited articles were cited 15804 times. The most productive decade was the 1990s (40% of the top 100 articles). Twenty-five journals contributed to all included articles. Journal of Neurosurgery contributed most of the articles (20%). Most common contributing country was the USA (60%). "Operative treatment" was the most common research topic (68%), followed by other aspects such as medical management (13%), epidemiology (12%), diagnosis (5%), or translational medicine (2%). The current analysis highlights the importance of the multimodal approach in the study and treatment of VS. While emphasizing the relevance of including highly cited articles in the current education of VS, our results point out the deficiency in certain research areas with high impact in other fields of neuro-oncology, such as translational medicine and molecular epigenetics.
    Keywords:  Acoustic neuroma; Neurooncology; Neurosurgery; Otology; Radiosurgery; Tumor
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10143-021-01487-4
  6. Arthroscopy. 2021 Feb 01. pii: S0749-8063(21)00056-6. [Epub ahead of print]
       PURPOSE: To highlight the characteristics of the 100 most-cited articles on arthroscopy and provide the variation trend of citation rate among the top 25 articles in the past nine years. We further analyzed the topics of interest in the past or currently.
    METHODS: The Thomson ISI Web of Science database was used to identify arthroscopy related articles that were published from 1950 to March 31, 2020. The 100 most-cited articles were selected for further analysis. In addition, author keywords of the articles that published in the recent 5 years were further analyzed.
    RESULTS: Mean of citations was 433.59±400.73. The publication year ranged from 1980 to 2013. Most articles were focused on cartilage lesions and treatments (26%). A large proportion of articles were published in the 2000's (61%). Arthroscopy - the Journal of Arthroscopic and Related Surgery (23%) was the most popular journal. One half of the articles originated from the United States. The most prolific institution and first author was the Steadman Philippon Research Institute (5%) and Marc J Philippon (4%). Most of the articles were level IV evidence (33%). The citation rate has increased by 131% from the previous top 25 articles published in 2011. A growth trend can be seen in the citation density over time. "Shoulder" (occurrences=535) is the most used joint keywords and "Rotator Cuff" (342) is the most used keywords of research objective in the last 5 years, while the occurrences of "Cartilage" only occurs 262 times.
    CONCLUSION: Based on bibliometric analysis of the 100 most cited articles on arthroscopy combined with network analysis of the whole articles that published in the recent 5 years, the topic of most interest in the recent 5 years is rotator cuff rather than cartilage. The number of citations among the 25 most-cited articles is growing rapidly and at least doubles in size on average in the past nine years. Citation density among the 100 most-cited articles on arthroscopy have a growth trend.
    CLINICAL RELEVANCE: This article clarifies the characteristics of the 100 most cited papers and provides guidance on the topics of interest in the past or currently as a roadmap for future research on arthroscopy.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arthro.2021.01.039
  7. J Cerebrovasc Endovasc Neurosurg. 2021 Feb 05.
       Objective: Dural arteriovenous fistula (DAVF) is a rare pathological vascular lesion with variable clinical manifestations. Since 1968, several articles have been published to address spinal and cranial DAVFs. The aim of this study is to identify, analyse, and review the pertinent literature of the top-100 most cited articles on DAVFs published to date.
    Methods: A title-specific, keyword-based search with no time restriction was performed in June 2020. The Scopus database was used to identify the top-100 most cited articles on DAVFs. The term "dural arteriovenous fistula" was used as a search keyword. The search results were arranged in descending order based on the total citation count. The top-100 articles were categorized into ten categories.
    Results: Between 1968 and 2020, a total of 2298 articles were published on DAVFs. The top-100 most cited articles were published between 1983 and 2012. The total number of citations for the top-100 articles was 12393 (123 citations/article). Most articles (34%) were investigating the clinical aspect of DAVFs. The country contributing to the most impactful and highest volume of publications (46%) was the United States. The Mayo Clinic was the most active institute in contribution. Most articles (29%) were published by the Journal of Neurosurgery.
    Conclusions: In the top-100 most cited articles on DAVF, most studies were published in neurosurgery/neuroradiology-dedicated journals. This bibliometric analysis identifies the publication trends and provides a comprehensive overview of the most influential articles addressing DAVFs.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric; Citation analysis; Dural arteriovenous fistula
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.7461/jcen.2021.E2020.09.003
  8. Endocr Metab Immune Disord Drug Targets. 2021 Feb 03.
       BACKGROUND: Bibliometric analysis can analyze development trends and predict research hotspots. We used these analyses to better understand pregnancy-related implications of thyroid diseases.
    METHODS: Publications on thyroid diseases during pregnancy from 1926 to hitherto were retrieved based on the Web of Science database. The publications and references, the institutions and countries, the journals, the keywords and citations, were analyzed by utilizing VOSviewer, CiteSpace and CitNetExplorer.
    RESULTS: A total of 3310 publications were retrieved and were cited 87913 times. The United States took the dominant position in outputs and collaborations. Harvard University had the most articles 86, which also had the highest h-index 30. Thyroid ranked first with 201 publications and Journal of Clinical Endocrinology Metabolism had the highest h-index 67. Among the 49 burst keywords, "antibody" had the longest burst period from 1991 to 2012, "thyroxine" had the strongest burst strength 16.7026, "hypothyroxinemia" appeared most recently in 2018. The most frequent keyword was "pregnancy" occurred 1324 times. All the top 98 frequent keywords were clustered into 4 clusters. The citation network visualization was grouped into 8 groups.
    CONCLUSION: The research focus of thyroid diseases in pregnancy ranged from clinical thyroid dysfunction to milder thyroid dysfunction. Guidelines published by the American Thyroid Association enacted a crucial purpose in the treatment and development of thyroid diseases during pregnancy. Some randomized controlled studies of unresolved problems and long-term follow-up of offspring may be the direction of future research. In the meantime, bibliometric methods can help scholars choose journals, track research hotspots, and identify the direction or focus of future research.
    Keywords:  Thyroid diseases; bibliometrics; guideline; maternal; outcomes.; pregnancy
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2174/1871530321666210203214142
  9. J Foot Ankle Surg. 2021 Jan 19. pii: S1067-2516(21)00003-X. [Epub ahead of print]
      Research publication is a central to the scientific process and comprehensive bibliometric analysis is a leading way to better understand trends within research. Currently, there are limited bibliometric analyses of literature pertaining to foot and ankle surgery. This study aims to quantify the volume of research and investigate what may affect publication and citation. Journals associated with the 3 major orthopedic foot and ankle societies (Foot & Ankle International[FAI], Foot and Ankle Surgery, and The Foot) and one podiatric college (Journal of Foot and Ankle Surgery®) were evaluated from January 2009 to December 2018 using Scopus (Elsevier, Amsterdam, the Netherlands). Descriptive statistics were used to summarize article characteristics and regression modeling was used to determine factors associated with a country's current and future productivity and an article's citation rate. A total of 4994 articles were published over the 10-year period, with the largest contributor of publications being the United States of America (USA), who produced 2096 (41.8%) publications. Regression analysis found no association between a country's productivity and gross domestic product or population. There was no significant relationship between a country's baseline publication rate and future publication rate. The variables significantly associated with an increased citation count were; the number of years since publication, the number of authors, publication in FAI and if the article was a review. To our knowledge this is the largest bibliometric analysis of foot and ankle publications. The majority of research is being produced by the USA, but there are numerous complex factors associated with citation and publication rates. Further research is required to fully assess these factors and characterize the state of foot and ankle surgery research.
    Keywords:  citation count; citations; gross domestic product; publication; self-citation
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1053/j.jfas.2020.11.005
  10. Heliyon. 2021 Jan;7(1): e06005
      The HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) is the world's largest publicly funded, multi-disciplinary international collaboration facilitating the development of vaccines to prevent HIV/AIDS and has conducted the vast majority of HIV/AIDS clinical trials since its inception in 1999. Although scientific findings from the program have been published in scholarly journals, the impact of a large scientific research network such as the HVTN on the HIV/AIDS vaccine field has not been assessed. This paper describes and elucidates the productivity, influence, and collaboration among HVTN researchers over the last two decades. Our analyses indicate that the HVTN has funded a large number of HIV/AIDS vaccine safety and efficacy clinical trials through a strong global network of clinical sites. In addition, several metrics indicate HVTN researchers also published original research articles that are influential in the HIV vaccine field. Scientific research collaboration is critically important in a complex and multidisciplinary field such as HIV vaccine development as it allows improved sharing of knowledge and expertise as well as the pooling of resources and data. We found that collaboration in the HIV vaccine field increased during this time period and collaboration among HVTN authors increased even more. Combining these productivity, influence, and collaboration metrics with research outcomes can provide a comprehensive assessment of large complex programs such as the HVTN.
    Keywords:  Bibliometrics; HIV; HIV vaccine; Outcomes
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e06005
  11. Front Pharmacol. 2020 ;11 587526
      Open innovation in medical and pharmaceutical research has grown steadily over the last decade. However, the performance of the published literature in terms of the scientific impact and gaining social media attention remains largely unexplored. The scientific literature of open innovation was examined by means of bibliometric analyses to identify the most prolific authors, organizations, countries, journals, research areas, and recurring terms. By accessing the Web of Science Core Collection and Altmetric electronic databases, citation-related and Altmetric data were evaluated. Public-private partnerships and a selection of newly introduced potential novel drugs in the analyzed publications were identified. North America and Europe were the major literature contributors. Research outputs were mainly published in journals focused on business and economics, pharmacology and pharmacy, and engineering. Many pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies contributed to the analyzed publications, with higher mean citation counts and social media attention (Altmetric score) than nonindustry articles. Public-private partnerships fostered financial support, sharing of expertise and intellectual property, and research collaborations. In summary, open innovation might serve as a powerful strategy to both benefit the involved industry entities and accelerate the development of solutions and products for the betterment of human health.
    Keywords:  crowdsourcing; drug discovery; intellectual property; knowledge management; open innovation; patient-centered innovation; pharmaceutical industry; public-private partnership
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2020.587526
  12. Graefes Arch Clin Exp Ophthalmol. 2021 Feb 03.
       BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic increased the gender gap in academic publishing. This study assesses COVID-19's impact on ophthalmology gender authorship distribution and compares the gender authorship proportion of COVID-19 ophthalmology-related articles to previous ophthalmology articles.
    METHODS: This cohort study includes authors listed in all publications related to ophthalmology in the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset and CDC COVID-19 research database. Articles from 65 ophthalmology journals from January to July 2020 were selected. All previous articles published in the same journals were extracted from PubMed. Gender-API determined authors' gender.
    RESULTS: Out of 119,457 COVID-19-related articles, we analyzed 528 ophthalmology-related articles written by 2518 authors. Women did not exceed 40% in any authorship positions and were most likely to be middle, first, and finally, last authors. The proportions of women in all authorship positions from the 2020 COVID-19 group (29.6% first, 31.5% middle, 22.1% last) are significantly lower compared to the predicted 2020 data points (37.4% first, 37.0% middle, 27.6% last) (p < .01). The gap between the proportion of female authors in COVID-19 ophthalmology research and the 2020 ophthalmology-predicted proportion (based on 2002-2019 data) is 6.1% for overall authors, 7.8% for first authors, and 5.5% for last and middle authors. The 2020 COVID-19 authorship group (1925 authors) was also compared to the 2019 group (33,049 authors) based on journal category (clinical/basic science research, general/subspecialty ophthalmology, journal impact factor).
    CONCLUSIONS: COVID-19 amplified the authorship gender gap in ophthalmology. When compared to previous years, there was a greater decrease in women's than men's academic productivity.
    Keywords:  Authorship; COVID-19; Gender; Ophthalmology
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s00417-021-05085-4
  13. Arthroscopy. 2021 Feb;pii: S0749-8063(20)31270-6. [Epub ahead of print]37(2): 425-426
      When one considers that as many as 2.5 million scientific articles are published each year, it is likely that more than a few contain errors. Probably, most go undetected. In theory, scientific literature is self-correcting, and the truth will eventually be revealed. However, to maintain the integrity of our literature, it is best to correct errors. Fortunately, when it comes to an errant citation, most scientific citations provide background, and errors in background citations should not change the conclusion of a study. However, for systematic reviews that quantitatively synthesize published research findings in a meta-analysis, an error in (or retraction of) an included citation will affect the study results. Such errors require correction, revision of the meta-analysis, and electronic attachment of the notation to the publication.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arthro.2020.12.196
  14. J Psychoactive Drugs. 2021 Feb 03. 1-16
      This study was designed to identify trends in the top-cited classic psychedelic publications. The top 50 publications on classic psychedelics with the greatest total of number of citations and annual citation rate were identified and pooled. Unique articles (n = 77) were dichotomized by median year of publication (2010); the differential distribution of study characteristics between the "Recent Cohort" (n = 40) and "Older Cohort" (n = 37) were documented. The Recent Cohort had a greater annual citation rate (median 76.5, IQR 43.8 to 103.3) compared to the Older Cohort (median 8.8, IQR 4.2 to 17.2, p < .001). The Recent Cohort included a greater number of clinical studies (n = 27 [67.5%] vs. n = 10 [27.0%]) while the Older Cohort included more basic science and preclinical studies (n = 22 [59.5%] vs. n = 3 [7.5%], p < .001). Psilocybin was the predominant psychedelic studied in the Recent Cohort (n = 26 [40.6%] vs. n = 8 [17.4%]) while lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was predominantly studied in the Older Cohort (n = 26 [56.5%] vs. n = 19 [29.7%], p = .028). The Recent Cohort included more studies examining affective disorders (n = 16 [25.8%] vs. n = 1 [2.7%]) and substance use disorders (n = 6 [9.7%] vs. n = 1 [2.7%]), while the Older Cohort included a greater number of pharmacological outcomes (n = 26 [70.3%] vs. n = 11 [17.7%], p < .001). This study identified and documented trends in the top-cited classic psychedelic publications. The field is continuing to form a foundational understanding of the pharmacological effects of psychedelics and is now advancing with the identification of therapeutic uses within clinical populations.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric; DMT; LSD; citation rates; classic psychedelics; dimethyltryptamine; lysergic acid diethylamide; mescaline; psilocybin; psychedelics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/02791072.2021.1874573
  15. J Diabetes Metab Disord. 2021 Jan 29. 1-12
       Purpose: As COVID-19 spreads rapidly and could affect the people and also lead to their death, especially individuals with underlying diseases, such as diabetes, the research community is also active in publishing novel research about it. Analyzing scientific outputs in this topic can represent an overview of publications. For this purpose, this study was conducted to determine status of publishing research works related to COVID-19 and analyzing the all documents published and indexed in Web of Science database and illustrate the co-occurrence and co-authority of hot papers in this documents.
    Methodology: Our search strategy was based on using the related key terms including COVID-19, coronavirus, SARS2, etc., to find out all the published scientific works related to coronavirus disease indexed in web of science (WoS) in 2020. We then extracted the all hot papers and especially hot papers in endocrinology category and analyzed them. The data saved and imported in VOSviewer and ScientoPy programs for analysis and illustration of our data. We have shown our analysis in the tables, figures and maps.
    Results: Totally, 56,402 records and 309 hot papers were retrieved. 3 of these hot papers were in endocrinology category. The most common type of publication was original papers followed by editorial papers in the second rank. The country with the most published documents was the USA followed by China. The journals of "British Medical Journal" and "Journal of Medical Virology" were ranked as the first and second sources, respectively. The "Harvard University" was the top organization with high proportion of scientific publications and "the Lancet" was the top-ranked journal that published highly-cited papers.
    Conclusion: The literature on COVID-19 is increasing with a high and fast growth. In this regard, there is a need to evaluate these publications once in a while and their results should be published to use this information for more effective management of future research works with emphasizes on the gaps of researches and more citable documents and allocation of budgets on more needed research and don't carry out the duplicates research. This would be helpful for prevention, control, and treatment of COVID-19 that is now among the most common topics in the world.
    Keywords:  COVID-19; Coronavirus; Scientific production; Scientometrics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s40200-020-00718-7
  16. Int J Inj Contr Saf Promot. 2021 Feb 03. 1-10
      Road traffic accidents have become an important social issue worldwide. This study aims to analyse the research status of road traffic injury from 1928 to 2018 and discuss the future research trends. Co-word analysis was applied to analyse 4,184 articles collected from the core collection of Web of Science. Cluster analysis and social network analysis (SNA) were adopted to group keywords, visualize the links between them, and indicate their importance. Strategic diagram was used to reveal the network status of each cluster. The results lead to the following conclusions: (1) 'Road traffic accident', 'injury', 'road safety', 'mortality', and 'risk factor' are at the centre of social network, indicating that these keywords play the most important roles in the field of road traffic injury research. (2) A total of 60 high-frequency keywords are divided into five clusters, namely 'accident causes leading to injury', 'analysis methods', 'health & injury', 'safety management', and 'road traffic', indicating that they are the main sub-fields of road traffic injury research. (3) 'Risk perception' and 'systems theory' are widely discussed topics emerging in recent years. On the basic of the five clusters, valuable references are provided for future research.
    Keywords:  Road traffic injury; research status; research trends
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/17457300.2021.1881558
  17. PLoS One. 2021 ;16(2): e0246427
       BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has yielded an unprecedented quantity of new publications, contributing to an overwhelming quantity of information and leading to the rapid dissemination of less stringently validated information. Yet, a formal analysis of how the medical literature has changed during the pandemic is lacking. In this analysis, we aimed to quantify how scientific publications changed at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
    METHODS: We performed a cross-sectional bibliometric study of published studies in four high-impact medical journals to identify differences in the characteristics of COVID-19 related publications compared to non-pandemic studies. Original investigations related to SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 published in March and April 2020 were identified and compared to non-COVID-19 research publications over the same two-month period in 2019 and 2020. Extracted data included publication characteristics, study characteristics, author characteristics, and impact metrics. Our primary measure was principal component analysis (PCA) of publication characteristics and impact metrics across groups.
    RESULTS: We identified 402 publications that met inclusion criteria: 76 were related to COVID-19; 154 and 172 were non-COVID publications over the same period in 2020 and 2019, respectively. PCA utilizing the collected bibliometric data revealed segregation of the COVID-19 literature subset from both groups of non-COVID literature (2019 and 2020). COVID-19 publications were more likely to describe prospective observational (31.6%) or case series (41.8%) studies without industry funding as compared with non-COVID articles, which were represented primarily by randomized controlled trials (32.5% and 36.6% in the non-COVID literature from 2020 and 2019, respectively).
    CONCLUSIONS: In this cross-sectional study of publications in four general medical journals, COVID-related articles were significantly different from non-COVID articles based on article characteristics and impact metrics. COVID-related studies were generally shorter articles reporting observational studies with less literature cited and fewer study sites, suggestive of more limited scientific support. They nevertheless had much higher dissemination.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0246427
  18. Nanomaterials (Basel). 2021 Jan 28. pii: 336. [Epub ahead of print]11(2):
      Since the 1990s, supercritical fluids for the synthesis of nanomaterials have been paid more and more attention by researchers and have gradually become one of the most important ways to prepare nanomaterials. In this study, literature data on "supercritical fluids for the synthesis of nanomaterials" from 1998 to 2020 were obtained from the Web of Science database, and the data were processed and analyzed by the bibliometric method combined with Microsoft office 2019, Origin 2018, VOSviewer, and other software, so as to obtain the research status and development trend of "supercritical fluids for the synthesis of nanomaterials". The results show that since literature on "supercritical fluids for the synthesis of nanomaterials" appeared for the first time in 1998, the number of articles published every year has risen. In terms of this field, China has become the second-largest publishing country after the United States, and China and the United States display a lot of cooperation and exchanges in this field. "Supercritical CO2", "supercritical water", "supercritical antisolvent", "surface modification", and so on have become the research hotspots of "supercritical fluids for the synthesis of nanomaterials".
    Keywords:  bibliometrics; nanomaterials; supercritical
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/nano11020336
  19. BMC Cancer. 2021 Feb 04. 21(1): 115
       BACKGROUND: In recent decades, the 5-year survival rate of osteosarcoma remains poor, despite the variety of operations, and exploration of drug therapy has become the key to improvement. This study investigates the contribution of different aspects in osteosarcoma and cure, and predicts research hotspots to benefit future clinical outcomes.
    METHODS: The Web of Science and PubMed databases were queried to collect all relevant publications related to osteosarcoma and cure from 2009 to 2019. These data were imported into CiteSpace and the Online Analysis Platform of Literature Metrology for bibliometric analysis. Bi-clustering was performed on Bibliographic Item co-occurrence Matrix Builder (BICOMB) and gCLUTO to identify hotspots. Additionally, completed clinical trials on osteosarcoma with results past phase II were collated.
    RESULTS: A total of 2258 publications were identified in osteosarcoma and cure from 2009 to 2019. China has the largest number of publications (38.49%), followed by the United States (23.03%) with the greatest impact (centrality = 0.44). The centrality of most institutions is < 0.1, and Central South University and Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center possess the highest average citation rates of 3.25 and 2.87. BMC cancer has the highest average citation rate of 3.26 in 772 journals. Four authors (Picci P, Gorlick R, Bielack SS and Bacci G) made the best contributions. We also identified eight hotspots and collected 41 clinical trials related to drug research on osteosarcoma.
    CONCLUSIONS: The urgent need exists to strengthen global academic exchanges. Overcoming multidrug resistance in osteosarcoma is the focus of past, present and future investigations. Transformation of the metastasis pattern, microenvironment genetics mechanism, alternative methods of systemic chemotherapy and exploration of traditional Chinese medicine is expected to contribute to a new upsurge of research.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; Co-word biclustering analysis; Cure; Hotspots; Osteosarcoma
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s12885-021-07818-4
  20. J Biosaf Biosecur. 2021 Jun;3(1): 4-9
      Since the outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a large number of COVID-19-related reports have been published in journals or submitted to preprint platforms. In this study, we search the COVID-19-related literature officially published and included in the Web of Science (WOS) database or submitted to four preprint platforms: bioRxiv, medRxiv, Preprints, and SSRN. Using data on the number of reports, author institution, country, and research category, we analyze global trends in COVID-19 research, including institution distribution and research hotspots. The results show that a large number of COVID-19-related reports have been produced; the United States has contributed the most published literature, followed by China. The United States has published the most reports included in the WOS in the categories of non-pharmaceutical interventions, treatment, and vaccine-related reports, while China has published the most literature in the categories of clinical features and complications, virology and immunology, epidemiology, and detection and diagnosis. Publication countries are concentrated in Asia, North America, and Europe, while South America and Africa have less literature. In conclusion, many scientific research issues related to COVID-19 need to be further clarified and COVID-19 research urgently needs global cooperation.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric; COVID-19; Preprint; Web of Science
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jobb.2020.12.002
  21. J Athl Train. 2021 Feb 04.
       CONTEXT: Research into sport-related concussion (SRC) has grown substantially over the past decade, yet no authors to date have synthesized developments over this critical time period.
    OBJECTIVE: To apply a network-analysis approach in evaluating trends in the SRC literature using a comprehensive search of original, peer-reviewed research articles involving human participants published between January 1, 2010, and December 15, 2019.
    DESIGN: Narrative review.
    MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Bibliometric maps were derived from a comprehensive search of all published, peer-reviewed SRC articles in the Web of Science database. A clustering algorithm was used to evaluate associations among journals, organizations or institutions, authors, and key words. The online search yielded 6130 articles, 528 journals, 7598 authors, 1966 organizations, and 3293 key words.
    RESULTS: The analysis supported 5 thematic clusters of journals: (1) biomechanics/sports medicine (n = 15), (2) pediatrics/rehabilitation (n = 15), (3) neurotrauma/neurology/neurosurgery (n = 11), (4) general sports medicine (n = 11), and (5) neuropsychology (n = 7). The analysis identified 4 organizational clusters of hub institutions: (1) University of North Carolina (n = 19), (2) University of Toronto (n = 19), (3) University of Michigan (n = 11), and (4) University of Pittsburgh (n = 10). Network analysis revealed 8 clusters for SRC key words, each with a central topic area: (1) epidemiology (n = 14), (2) rehabilitation (n = 12), (3) biomechanics (n = 11), (4) imaging (n = 10), (5) assessment (n = 9), (6) mental health/chronic traumatic encephalopathy (n = 9), (7) neurocognition (n = 8), and (8) symptoms/impairments (n = 5).
    CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that during the past decade SRC research has (1) been published primarily in sports medicine, pediatric, and neuro-focused journals, (2) involved a select group of researchers from several key institutions, and (3) concentrated on new topical areas, including treatment or rehabilitation and mental health.
    Keywords:  assessment; mild traumatic brain injury; rehabilitation
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.4085/1062-6050-0280.20
  22. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2021 Feb 05. 18(1): 12
       BACKGROUND: The tool kits of bibliometrics and science mapping provide a standard methodology to map the knowledge base of specific fields of science. The aim of the present research is the analysis of the recent international trends of sport nutrition science, as well as the primary identification of the research topics and results of sport nutrition science via enhanced bibliometric methods for the 2000-2018 time period.
    METHODS: Altogether, 3889 publications were included in this study. We identified the most relevant sport nutrition topics by running a community detection algorithm on the proximity network constructed via network text analysis. The key issues and key concepts of sport nutrition topics as well as their relations were evaluated via network analysis. Besides, we carried a chronological analysis of topics out and a scientometric evaluative analysis was also created.
    RESULTS: We identified the four main basic groups from which the 18 most characteristics topics were analyzed. The 18 topics are the following: 'soccer and physiology', 'carbohydrate metabolism', 'muscle physiology: alkalosis and acidosis', 'muscle mass gain and dietary supplementation', 'fluid balance and hydration', 'dietary intake and nutrition knowledge', 'determination of energy need of athletes', 'bone health and female athlete triad', 'hydration strategy', 'body weight management', 'nutritional strategies and human skeletal muscle', 'dietary supplementation of nitrates', 'oxidative stress and dietary supplement use', 'dietary supplement use and doping', 'oxidative stress and inflammation and dietary antioxidants', 'exercise adaptation and nutritional strategies', 'gut microbiota', 'celiac disease'. Regarding the size of the topic, researches on sport nutrition science have put the focus on the following three groups: 'muscle mass gain and dietary supplementation', 'carbohydrate metabolism', 'oxidative stress and dietary supplement use'. The greatest scientific impact can be ascribed to the following topics: 'nutritional strategies and human skeletal muscle', 'dietary supplementation of nitrates', 'body weight management', and 'gut microbiota'.
    CONCLUSIONS: Scientific output on sport nutrition has continuously been rising between 2000 and 2018. The ratio of topics related to sport nutrition but predominantly connected to basic research has decreased significantly within all publications. The results of this study confirm the role of science mapping in the identification of specific research topics and primary research directions in the field of sport nutrition science.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric mapping; Network text analysis; Scientometric analysis; Sport nutrition research trends
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s12970-021-00409-5
  23. Sustain Cities Soc. 2021 Apr;67 102729
      The COVID-19 outbreak has extremely impacted the globe due to travel restrictions and lockdowns. Geographically, COVID-19 has shown disproportional impacts; however, the research themes' distribution is yet to be explored. Thus, this study explored the geographical distribution of the research themes that relate to COVID-19 and the transportation sector. The study applied a text network approach on the bibliometric data of over 400 articles published between December 2019 and December 2020. It was found that the researches and the associated themes were geographically distributed based on the events that took place in the respective countries. Most of the articles were published by the authors from four countries, the USA, China, Japan, and the UK. The text network results revealed that the USA-based studies mainly focused on international travelers, monitoring, travel impacts of COVID-19, and social-distancing measures. The Japanese-based studies focused on the princess diamond cruise ship incident. On the other hand, Chinese authors published articles related to travel to Wuhan and China, passenger health, and public transportation. The UK-based studies had diverse topics of interest. Lastly, the remaining 62 countries' studies focused on returning travelers from China, public transportation, and the global spread of COVID-19. The findings are crucial to the transportation sector's researchers for various applications.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric; COVID-19; Machine learning; Text networks; Transportation
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2021.102729
  24. Biology (Basel). 2021 Feb 02. pii: 104. [Epub ahead of print]10(2):
      Mass cytometry (CyTOF) is a relatively novel technique for the multiparametric analysis of single-cell features with an increasing central role in cell biology, immunology, pharmacology, and biomedicine. This technique mixes the fundamentals of flow cytometry with mass spectrometry and is mainly used for in-depth studies of the immune system and diseases with a significant immune load, such as cancer, autoimmune diseases, and viral diseases like HIV or the recently emerged COVID-19, produced by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. The objective of this study was to provide a useful insight into the evolution of the mass cytometry research field, revealing the knowledge structure (conceptual and social) and authors, countries, sources, documents, and organizations that have made the most significant contribution to its development. We retrieved 937 articles from the Web of Science (2010-2019), analysed 71 Highly Cited Papers (HCP) through the H-Classics methodology and computed the data by using Bibliometrix R package. HCP sources corresponded to high-impact journals, such as Nature Biotechnology and Cell, and its production was concentrated in the US, and specifically Stanford University, affiliation of the most relevant authors in the field. HCPs analysis confirmed great interest in the study of the immune system and complex data processing in the mass cytometry research field.
    Keywords:  Bibliometrix; H-classics; H-index; bibliometric indicators; cytometry by time of flight (CyTOF); highly cited papers (HCP); mass cytometry; science communication; scientometrics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/biology10020104
  25. Afr J AIDS Res. 2021 Feb 04. 1-5
      Background: In Africa, HIV/AIDS research is concentrated in certain countries, particularly South Africa. This distribution may not accurately reflect the disease prevalence or the true research efforts of countries. Objectives: To identify HIV/AIDS research productivity of countries in Africa and the Middle East, in absolute terms and adjusted for people living with HIV, population size and economic development. Methods: We identified all the articles and reviews on HIV and AIDS in the Web of Science Core Collection in which African or Middle Eastern countries had participated. After determining the number of documents produced by each country, we adjusted the findings for the number of people living with HIV, number of inhabitants, gross domestic product and gross national income per capita. Results: African and Middle Eastern countries participated in 21.52% (n = 14 808) of all 68 808 documents analysed. East and Southern Africa produced 17.8% of all documents (n = 12 249), West and Central Africa accounted for only 3.34% (n = 2300), and the Middle East and North Africa, 1.18% (n = 814). South Africa produced 40.94% (n = 6 063) of all publications. Only two other African countries - Uganda (12.97%; n = 1 921) and Kenya (10.71%; n = 1 586) - produced more than 10% of these publications. The indices used for adjusting research productivity revealed the effort and contribution of other countries. Conclusion: Our study confirmed the leading role of South Africa in driving HIV/AIDS research, but also highlighted the contribution of countries such as Uganda, Malawi, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
    Keywords:  IDS; South Africa; acquired immunodeficiency syndrome; bibliometrics; epidemiology
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2989/16085906.2020.1830133
  26. BMJ Open. 2021 Feb 01. 11(2): e047107
       OBJECTIVE: To estimate the financial costs paid by individual medical researchers from meeting the article processing charges (APCs) levied by open access journals in 2019.
    DESIGN: Cross-sectional analysis.
    DATA SOURCES: Scopus was used to generate two random samples of researchers, the first with a senior author article indexed in the 'Medicine' subject area (general researchers) and the second with an article published in the ten highest-impact factor general clinical medicine journals (high-impact researchers) in 2019. For each researcher, Scopus was used to identify all first and senior author original research or review articles published in 2019. Data were obtained from Scopus, institutional profiles, Journal Citation Reports, publisher databases, the Directory of Open Access Journals, and individual journal websites.
    MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Median APCs paid by general and high-impact researchers for all first and senior author research and review articles published in 2019.
    RESULTS: There were 241 general and 246 high-impact researchers identified as eligible for our study. In 2019, the general and high-impact researchers published a total of 914 (median 2, IQR 1-5) and 1471 (4, 2-8) first or senior author research or review articles, respectively. 42% (384/914) of the articles from the general researchers and 29% (428/1471) of the articles from the high-impact medical researchers were published in fully open access journals. The median total APCs paid by general researchers in 2019 was US$191 (US$0-US$2500) and the median total paid by high-impact researchers was US$2900 (US$0-US$5465); the maximum paid by a single researcher in total APCs was US$30115 and US$34676, respectively.
    CONCLUSIONS: Medical researchers in 2019 were found to have paid between US$0 and US$34676 in total APCs. As journals with APCs become more common, it is important to continue to evaluate the potential cost to researchers, especially on individuals who may not have the funding or institutional resources to cover these costs.
    Keywords:  health economics; health policy; medical journalism
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-047107
  27. Mar Drugs. 2021 Jan 26. pii: 61. [Epub ahead of print]19(2):
      Biotechnology is an essential tool for the sustainable exploitation of marine resources, although the full development of their potential is complicated by a series of cognitive and technological limitations. Thanks to an innovative systematic approach that combines the meta-analysis of 620 articles produced worldwide with 29 high TRL (Technology Readiness Level) European funded projects, the study provides an assessment of the growth prospects of blue biotechnologies, with a focus on pharmaceutical and food applications, and the most promising technologies to overcome the main challenges in the commercialization of marine products. The results show a positive development trend, with publications more than doubled from 2010 (36) to 2019 (70). Biochemical and molecular characterization, with 150 studies, is the most widely used technology. However, the emerging technologies in basic research are omics technologies, pharmacological analysis and bioinformatics, which have doubled the number of publications in the last five years. On the other hand, technologies for optimizing the conditions of cultivation, harvesting and extraction are central to most business models with immediate commercial exploitation (65% of high-TRL selected projects), especially in food and nutraceutical applications. This research offers a starting point for future research to overcome all those obstacles that restrict the marketing of products derived from organisms.
    Keywords:  Blue Growth; Horizon 2020; TRL; drugs; food; marine biotechnology; market trend; pharmaceutical applications
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/md19020061
  28. J Clin Epidemiol. 2021 Feb 02. pii: S0895-4356(21)00029-9. [Epub ahead of print]
       OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to determine whether there are differences in the language used in grant applications submitted to a Southern Brazil Research Support Foundation (FAPERGS) according to the gender, career stage, and the number of publications of applicants.
    STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: This observational study also evaluated the relationship between gender, career stage, curriculum, and writing characteristics. Summaries of all research proposals in the biomedical field of FAPERGS during the years of 2013 and 2014 were evaluated according to six language patterns (Positive emotions, Negative emotions, Analytic thinking, Clout, Authenticity, and Emotional tone) defined by the LIWC software. Applicant's gender, career stage, and the number of publications were also collected.
    RESULTS: Three hundred and forty-four (344) grant proposals met the inclusion criteria and were included in the analysis. No statistical differences were observed in the language pattern used by different gender applicants. In the language used by successful and unsuccessful applicants, we only found a small difference for clout (score 54.5 for not funded and 56.5 for funded grants). However, the principal investigators of successful applications had a significantly higher number of papers published (mean number of papers: 104 versus 58.5).
    CONCLUSIONS: Gender bias appears to be a more complex problem than just the type of language used; the way society is organized causes several gender biases that may be reflected throughout the women's career.
    Keywords:  gender bias; grant; observational; scientific writing
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2021.01.018
  29. J Evid Based Med. 2021 Feb 02.
       AIM: Use of systematic reviews (SRs) as first-level evidence for guideline recommendations hinges on review quality. In particular, US guidelines for adherence-related recommendations in the treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) are not based on available SRs of adherence-outcome relationships; it is unclear why. No published studies report on the quality of SRs on HIV adherence and outcomes, which may be driving the lack of use. We describe the quality of this body of literature.
    METHODS: Literature searches were conducted in Ovid MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PubMed Central, the Cochrane Library, Science Citation Index, Web of Science, ScIELO Citation Index, and Ovid Emcare. Screening and quality assessments were performed in duplicate using AMSTAR 2. Funding sources and impact factors of publishing journals were also extracted, and correlations between quality rankings and numbers of critical weaknesses versus impact factors were assessed using Spearman's rank correlation coefficient.
    RESULTS: Nine SRs of 1141 records met eligibility criteria. Overall confidence in the results was critically low for most (78%) SRs. Underperformance was found across all AMSTAR 2 domains. Impact factor (a surrogate or journal reputation) did not correlate with quality.
    CONCLUSIONS: SRs do not necessarily comprise top-level evidence despite the availability of quality appraisal tools and reporting guidance, which could explain the lack of SR evidence in US HIV medication adherence-related guideline recommendations. All parties to evidence synthesis publication should require quality assessment of studies.
    Keywords:  HIV; anti-HIV agents; antiretroviral therapy; highly active; medication adherence; methods; systematic review
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/jebm.12423
  30. J Pain Res. 2021 ;14 213-228
       Background: Pain is the most common symptom in patients with neoplasm. It is a distressing experience that seriously destructs the quality-of-life of patients, with a high prevalence in clinical observations. However, only a few studies have applied bibliometric methods to analyze systematic works on the comorbidity of cancer and pain.
    Purpose: The aim of this work was to conduct a systematic analysis of the scientific studies worldwide on the comorbidity of cancer and pain in 2010-2019.
    Methods: The Web of Science databases were searched for publications related to the comorbidity of cancer and pain from 2010 to 2019.
    Results: A total of 3,423 papers met the inclusion criteria in this research. The increase in the quantity of papers presented a significant growth from 2010 to 2019 (P<0.001) by linear regression analysis. The research subject categories of the 3,423 papers mainly concentrated on oncology (28.57%), clinical neurology (25.62%), and healthcare science services (15.89%). The US had the highest number of published papers, followed by the People's Republic of China, and England. According to scientific statistics, breast cancer (20.36%) was by far the most predominant topic in the papers related to the comorbidity of cancer and pain.
    Conclusion: This bibliometric research provided a framework for visual and quantitative research to management scholars in favor of exploring a potential field related to hot issue and research frontiers.
    Keywords:  CiteSpace; cancer; global trend; pain
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2147/JPR.S291741
  31. Transfusion. 2021 Feb 01.
       BACKGROUND: Several studies have highlighted the disparities in gender equity that exist in different medical specialties. The COVID-19 pandemic has further heightened the inequity faced by female physicians as they are challenged by increasing household and childcare duties, in addition to their professional responsibilities. Given these hurdles, fewer women than men have published in various medical disciplines. In this brief report, we wanted to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the academic output of female physicians and researchers in transfusion medicine.
    STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: We compared all articles in four transfusion medicine journals published from January 1 through July 31, 2019, to the same time period in 2020. In total, 1024 articles were reviewed for whether they included women as first or senior authors.
    RESULTS: Overall, women were first authors in 45.9% (n = 458) of all publications and senior authors in 35% (n = 356) of all publications. There was a statistically significant decrease in the percentage of women as first authors between 2019 (49.1%) and 2020 (42.7%) (P = 0.04). There was no significant change in the percentage of women as senior authors between 2019 (35.4%) and 2020 (35.5%) (P = 1.0).
    CONCLUSIONS: Similar to other medical specialties, the COVID-19 pandemic has further increased the disparities faced by female researchers in transfusion medicine as evidenced by a decrease in publications with women as first authors.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/trf.16306
  32. Acute Crit Care. 2021 Feb 05.
       Background: To determine the rate of conversion of abstracts presented at conferences into full-text articles published in peer-reviewed journals in the field of pediatric critical care medicine (PCCM) in a developing country.
    Methods: We retrospectively reviewed PCCM abstracts from Pakistan presented at national and international pediatric and critical care conferences over 10 years (January 2010 to March 2020). Data included abstract characteristics, such as presentation (poster/oral), presenter (fellow/resident), time of meeting (month and year), type of meeting, study design and topic; and publication characteristics, such as journal name, time (month and year) and first author. The primary outcome was publication rate of PCCM abstracts presented in meetings and time (months) from presentation to publication.
    Results: A total of 79 PCCM abstracts were presented in 17 meetings during the study period. There were 65 poster presentations (82.28%), of which 63 (79.74%) were presented at international critical care conferences and all presenters were PCCM fellows. In total, 64 (81%) abstracts were descriptive observational studies (retrospective: 50, 63.29%) and prospective (14, 17.72%). Only one was an interventional randomized controlled trial. The publication rate of PCCM abstracts was 63.3% (50/79) and the mean time to publication was 12.39±13.61 months. The publication rate was significantly correlated to the year of publication (p <0.001).
    Conclusion: The PCCM abstract publication rate and mean time from presentation to publication was 63.3% and 12.39±13.61 months, respectively, in a developing country.
    Keywords:  abstract; pediatric critical care medicine; presentation; publication; research
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.4266/acc.2020.00780
  33. Scientometrics. 2021 Jan 29. 1-48
      Over the last dozen years, the topic of small and medium enterprise (SME) default prediction has developed into a relevant research domain that has grown for important reasons exponentially across multiple disciplines, including finance, management, accounting, and statistics. Motivated by the enormous toll on SMEs caused by the 2007-2009 global financial crisis as well as the recent COVID-19 crisis and the consequent need to develop new SME default predictors, this paper provides a systematic literature review, based on a statistical, bibliometric analysis, of over 100 peer-reviewed articles published on SME default prediction modelling over a 34-year period, 1986 to 2019. We identified, analysed and reviewed five streams of research and suggest a set of future research avenues to help scholars and practitioners address the new challenges and emerging issues in a changing economic environment. The research agenda proposes some new innovative approaches to capture and exploit new data sources using modern analytical techniques, like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and macro-data inputs, with the aim of providing enhanced predictive results.
    Keywords:  Bankruptcy; Bibliometric analysis; Credit risk; Credit scoring; Default prediction; Failure; Rating; Risk prediction; SME survival; SMEs; Systematic literature review; VOSviewer
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03856-0
  34. Res Integr Peer Rev. 2021 Feb 01. 6(1): 2
       BACKGROUND: Scientists communicate progress and exchange information via publication and presentation at scientific meetings. We previously showed that text similarity analysis applied to Medline can identify and quantify plagiarism and duplicate publications in peer-reviewed biomedical journals. In the present study, we applied the same analysis to a large sample of conference abstracts.
    METHODS: We downloaded 144,149 abstracts from 207 national and international meetings of 63 biomedical conferences. Pairwise comparisons were made using eTBLAST: a text similarity engine. A domain expert then reviewed random samples of highly similar abstracts (1500 total) to estimate the extent of text overlap and possible plagiarism.
    RESULTS: Our main findings indicate that the vast majority of textual overlap occurred within the same meeting (2%) and between meetings of the same conference (3%), both of which were significantly higher than instances of plagiarism, which occurred in less than .5% of abstracts.
    CONCLUSIONS: This analysis indicates that textual overlap in abstracts of papers presented at scientific meetings is one-tenth that of peer-reviewed publications, yet the plagiarism rate is approximately the same as previously measured in peer-reviewed publications. This latter finding underscores a need for monitoring scientific meeting submissions - as is now done when submitting manuscripts to peer-reviewed journals - to improve the integrity of scientific communications.
    Keywords:  Conference presentations; Duplication; Plagiarism; Salami publication; Text similarity
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-020-00106-y