bims-evares Biomed News
on Evaluation of research
Issue of 2021–08–08
fifty-one papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society



  1. Ear Nose Throat J. 2021 Jul 31. 1455613211037641
       OBJECTIVE: Microtia is a congenital auricular malformation with a hypoplastic external ear that ranges in severity from a slightly smaller auricle to complete the absence of the auricle. The present study was conducted to identify and analyze the characteristics of microtia-related articles published from 2006 to 2020 by using bibliometric analyses.
    METHOD: Microtia-related studies published from 2006 to 2020 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database. Keywords, first author, citations, date of publication, and publication journal were extracted and quantitatively analyzed using Bibliographic Item Co-Occurrence Matrix Builder software and the Bibliometric (https://bibliometric.com/app). VOSviewer was used to visualize research and form a network map on keywords and citations.
    RESULTS: A total of 1031 articles from 2006 to 2020 were included. The number of articles showed an overall trend of growth over time. The United States and China are the top 2 countries in terms of the number of microtia-related articles. From the analysis of keyword clustering, keywords could be mainly divided into 4 clusters in the field of microtia research: surgery, tissue engineering, epidemiology, and rehabilitation including hearing-related treatments, evaluation of effects, and quality of life after surgery. The top 10 most frequently cited papers from 2006 to 2020 were also extracted and analyzed.
    CONCLUSION: A bibliometric research of microtia-related articles from 2006 to 2020 was conducted. This study may be helpful to understand the current research status of microtia and find the research trends in this field, thus proposing future directions for microtia research.
    Keywords:  bibliometric; microtia; network analysis; web of science
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/01455613211037641
  2. Ann Transl Med. 2021 Jun;9(11): 945
       Background: Keloids remain troublesome for clinicians because of the lack of standard therapy, and the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. Bibliometric analysis could be a powerful tool to comprehensively review research trends, evaluate publication performances and provide future perspectives. There is no bibliometric analysis focusing on keloid research.
    Methods: Keloid related publications were searched in Web of Science Core Collection from the publication year 1990 to 2019. Bibliometric data were provided on document type, annual publication number, most productive journals, publication geography, top potential authors, and highly cited articles. The distribution of single words in article titles was analyzed to evaluate the main research focuses and determine their development trends. Word cluster analysis was further performed to detect emerging trends in keloid research.
    Results: The number of annual articles increased from 24 in 1990 to 63 in 2006 and then increased sharply, reaching 139 in 2019. Dermatologic Surgery published the highest number of articles followed by Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. The USA ranked top with six publication indicators and China had a dramatic increase in the annual number of articles since 2012. Recent research hotspots include underlying pathogenetic mechanisms, keloid treatment, and therapeutic effect evaluation.
    Discussion: Keloids remain a research focus. Efforts will be continuously made to understand the underlying mechanism of keloid formation. Despite many treatment modalities, there is no gold standard for keloid treatment, and many efforts are being made in the exploration of new therapies. Moreover, it is foreseeable that objective measurement tools will have a higher status in the assessment of keloids and scars.
    Keywords:  Keloid; Web of Science Core Collection; bibliometric; citation analysis; research trends
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.21037/atm-21-508
  3. Ann Palliat Med. 2021 Jul;10(7): 7551-7559
       BACKGROUND: A bibliometric analysis which are widely used to gauge the scholarly impact of any scientific publication was conducted to give a basic overview of research publications on multiple sclerosis nursing.
    METHODS: Publications on multiple sclerosis nursing were retrieved by using a bibliometric method based on the Web of Science database [1900-2018].
    RESULTS: A total of 825 papers collected from 49 countries were retrieved in this study. The number of publications on multiple sclerosis nursing has increased steadily since 1999, and the top 12 research institutions publishing articles and nine of the ten most prolific authors were from the United States. Articles were most frequently published in the Journal of Neuroscience Nursing, and the key words of the top 10 highly cited papers changed from quality of life (QOL) and symptoms to terms including social support, psychological problems, rehabilitation treatment, cognitive impairment, and nursing intervention. While nursing practice and neuroscience nursing were the focus of research, other topics included QOL, functional rehabilitation, symptom management, nursing intervention, and support schemes.
    CONCLUSIONS: Research into multiple sclerosis nursing in China is at an early stage. Greater attention to the research focus and results of top institutions and core journals, and a focus on highly cited papers are needed to advance the field.
    Keywords:  Multiple sclerosis; Web of Science; bibliometric analysis; nursing
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.21037/apm-21-1057
  4. Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2021 Aug 05.
      In recent years, white rot fungi (WRFs) have received tremendous attention as a biotechnological tool for environmental pollution control. In order to systematically and comprehensively describe the progress, trends, and hotspots of WRF biotechnology in the field of environmental pollution control, the 3967 related publications from 2003 to 2020 were collected from Web of Science Core Collection database, and the bibliometric characteristics including publication output, country, institution, journal, author, citation frequency, h-index, and research focus were evaluated by using Excel 2007, CiteSpace V, and VOSviewer. The results indicated that the number of research publications increased rapidly before 2009, but after that, the number of publications fluctuated in a certain range. China and USA were the most productive countries and the most active country in international cooperation. In this field, most authors tend to cooperate within a small group. The journal and subject category with the largest number of publications are "International Biodeterioration & Biodegradation" and "Biotechnology Applied Microbiology", respectively. The analysis of high-frequency keywords revealed that "laccase", "biodegradation", "decolorization", and "Phanerochaete chrysosporium" were the most cited terms among all publications. The pretreatment of biomass waste, decolorization of dye wastewater, and bioremediation of polluted environment are the key research directions of WRF biotechnology. Finally, the frontier topics and active authors in this research field were identified using burst detection. We believe that this bibliometric study provides a comprehensive and systematic overview and promoted the future cooperative research and knowledge exchange in this field of WRF biotechnology for environmental applications.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; Collaborative relationship; Environmental applications; Visualization; Web of Science Core Collection; White rot fungi
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15787-1
  5. Psychiatr Q. 2021 Aug 03.
      Schizophrenia is a choronic, complex and powerfully inherited mental illness that seriously affects quality of life. The illness is one of the most researched psychiatric disorders from past to present. This study aims to provide a holistic summary of the global scientific outputs through bibliometric analyses and reveal the trend topics. The articles published between the years 1975 and 2020 were downloaded from the Web of Science (WoS) database and analyzed using bibliometric methods. The literature review was conducted using the keyword ''schizophren*'' in the ''Research Area'' category. The relation between the number of publications of the countries and the Gross Domestic Products and Human Development Index values were analyzed using Spearman's correlation coefficient. The number of articles between the years 2021 and 2032 was estimated through linear regression analysis.There were 103,992 publications, 51,117 of which were articles. The number of studies has increased in direct proportion to the development level of the countries. Schizophrenia Research was the most active journal. The most used research topics are cognition, negative symptoms, bipolar disorder, antipsychotics, depression, clozapine, quality of life. Trend keywords used in recent years are 'inflammation', 'biomarker', 'oxidative stress', 'Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF)', 'social cognition', 'metacognition', 'motivation', 'social functioning', 'functioning', 'mental health', 'metabolic syndrome', 'functional connectivity', 'adherence' and 'recovery' indicated new research frontiers in this field. Although schizophrenia has not been fully elucidated, studies are growing like an avalanche. Our study includes the most up-to-date and most comprehensive data ever made in this field.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; Citation analysis; Schizophrenia; Trend topics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-021-09937-4
  6. Indian J Psychol Med. 2021 May;43(3): 241-245
       Background: Despite exponential growth in Indian research, Indian journals have low impact factors. A previous study by one of the authors (CA) of this paper showed that articles published in the Indian Journal of Psychiatry (IJP) under-referenced previously published relevant papers in the same journal. Based on this, we decided to investigate the citation characteristics of contemporary scientific articles published in the Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine (IJPM).
    Methods: The citation characteristics of scientific articles published in 2018 (Vol 40, issues 1-6) in the IJPM were examined to determine how well the authors cited relevant articles published during the past ten years in the IJPM and the IJP.
    Results: There were 145 and 142 citation-worthy articles in the IJPM and the IJP, respectively; of these, 85.5% and 65.5%, respectively, had not been cited.
    Conclusions: Authors publishing in the IJPM under-reference previous relevant research published in the IJPM and IJP. This suggests unawareness of, deliberate disregard of, or even disdain for prior Indian research in the field. Additionally, if Indian researchers do not cite previous Indian research in the field published in Indian journals, the citation metrics of Indian journals will not grow.
    Keywords:  Impact factor; Indian Journal of Psychiatry; Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine; Indian psychiatry; Indian research; citation indices
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/0253717620928016
  7. Ann Palliat Med. 2021 Jul;10(7): 8203-8214
       BACKGROUND: Procalcitonin (PCT) plays an important role in the identification of bacterial infection and therapy guidance. The relevant literature is mainly classified under critical care medicine or infectious disease. The research status of PCT in general internal medicine (GIM) is currently unclear. This research aimed to analyze PCT-related literature in the GIM field and provide references for future research.
    METHODS: A subject search strategy was used for the term PCT, with the search scope limited to Medicine, General & Internal. We conducted a search of relevant literature in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) database in the Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC), with no publication date limit (1900 to May 16, 2021, the date of the final search for this study). The search results were analyzed using CiteSpace software to assess the status of PCT research in the GIM field based on annual paper publication numbers, the number of citations, country distribution, institution distribution, author distribution, journal distribution, and keyword usage.
    RESULTS: A total of 905 document records were retrieved. Articles were mainly from Europe, the United States, and China, and the number of citations totaled 15,917. There were 5 research institutions that published more than 10 related papers and 3 authors who published more than 10 papers. There was little cooperation between authors from different countries and institutions. This field should focus on leading journals in critical care medicine and quality comprehensive journals. Keyword analysis showed that the current research focus is the standardized application of PCT.
    CONCLUSIONS: There are few targeted studies on the application of PCT in GIM, and the relevant important literature mainly comes from other journals. GIM-specific research should be increased in the future.
    Keywords:  Procalcitonin (PCT); bibliometrics; general internal medicine (GIM); infection
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.21037/apm-21-1689
  8. J Knee Surg. 2021 Aug 06.
      Injuries to the menisci of the knee are common in orthopedic sports medicine. Bibliometric studies can identify the core literature on a topic and help further our collective knowledge for both clinical and educational purposes. The purpose of the current study was to (1) identify and describe the 50 most cited articles in meniscus research over an 80-year time period to capture a wide range of influential articles and (2) identify the "citation classics" and milestone articles related to the meniscus of the knee. The Science Citation Index Expanded subsection of the Web of Science Core Collection was systematically searched for the 50 most cited meniscus articles. Data pertaining to bibliometric and publication characteristics were extracted and reported using descriptive statistics. The top 50 articles were published between the years 1941 and 2014 and collectively cited 13,152 times. The median (interquartile [IQR]) number of total citations per article was 203.5 (167.0-261.8), while the median citation rate was 9.6 (7.4-13.9) citations per year. The most cited article was "Knee joint changes after meniscectomy," published in 1948. The article with the highest citation rate of 78.4 citations per year was "The long-term consequence of anterior cruciate ligaments and meniscus injuries - osteoarthritis," published in 2007. The majority of articles were clinical outcome studies (n = 28, 56%). The top 50 most cited meniscus articles represent a compilation of highly influential articles which may augment reading curriculums and provide a strong knowledge base for orthopaedic surgery residents and fellows. The decade with the most articles was the 2000s, representing a recent acceleration in meniscus-based research. This is a level IV, cross-sectional study.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1055/s-0041-1733881
  9. Front Med (Lausanne). 2021 ;8 556022
      Spinal stenosis is a common disease affecting the elderly that is present in a various forms. Its high incidence forces researchers to pay more attention and offer countermeasures. We used the Web of Science Core collection and PubMed database to obtain 5,606 scientific studies concerning spinal stenosis, and the number of publications maintained a roughly increasing trend from 108 in 2000 to 512 in 2018, only declining in 2011. Bibliometric analysis was conducted using the online analysis software CiteSpace and Bibliographic Item Co-Occurrence Matrix Builder (BICOMB). The United States maintains academic leadership in this field. The journal SPINE was the most authoritative, with 695 articles and an average of 12.73 citations. The exported major MeSH terms were further biclustered with gCLUTO according to co-word analysis to reveal research hotspots, including etiology, pathogenesis, clinical manifestation, conservative treatment, operative indication, internal implantation, and postoperative complications. After combination, the main topics focused on pathogenesis and surgical treatment. Narrowing causes flavum ligamentum hypertrophy, and posterior longitudinal ligament ossification is widely accepted. Additionally, minimally invasive surgery and internal implantation fixation are more valid in the clinic. Refining pathological classification and optimizing surgical methods and instrument properties will be important future research directions for spinal stenosis.
    Keywords:  MeSH terms; bibliometric analysis; publication trends; research hotspots; spinal stenosis
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2021.556022
  10. Animals (Basel). 2021 Jul 03. pii: 1997. [Epub ahead of print]11(7):
      Gut health is a recent relevant research topic in veterinary medicine and it has been shown to be associated with better zootechnical performances and animal welfare. A bibliometric analysis was performed to explore publication trends, dynamics and possible knowledge gaps in this field in the last twenty years (2000-2020). The database Web of Science was searched and the results were analyzed by the R package Bibliometrix. A total of 1696 documents were retrieved in the evaluated period, showing a constant annual growth in the number of publications of 22.4%. These articles focused mainly on pigs (34.8%), poultry (chicken, duck, turkey and quail-33.9%) and aquaculture (fishes, crustaceans and frog-15.0%) while a scarce number was found on felines, cows, horses, rodents, goats and sheep. China was the most productive country (24.7%) followed by the USA (17.2%) and Canada (5.7%). Keyword's analysis showed that the main research lines aimed to explore animal nutrition, prevention of inflammatory diseases and microbiota composition. This study shows a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of the evolution of veterinary gut health research that will help to drive future investigations on this topic.
    Keywords:  bibliometric analysis; gut health; veterinary medicine
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11071997
  11. J Transl Med. 2021 07 31. 19(1): 327
       BACKGROUND: The gastrointestinal microbiome is an important component of the human body and is closely related to human health and disease. This study describes the hotspots of the human gastrointestinal microbiome research and its evolution in the past decade, evaluates the scientific cooperation network, and finally predicts the field's future development trend using bibliometric analysis and a visualized study.
    METHODS: We searched the original articles from January 2010 to February 2021 in the Scopus database using the term "gastrointestinal microbiome" and its synonyms. CiteSpace was used to construct country and author co-occurrence map; conduct journal, citation cocitation analysis, and reference co-citation knowledge map; and form a keywords co-occurrence map, a clustering knowledge map, timeline view of keywords, and burst term map.
    RESULT: A total of 4444 documents published from January 2010 to February 2021 were analysed. In approximately the past decade, the number of articles on the human gastrointestinal microbiome has increased rapidly, and the research topics focus on different populations, research methods, and detection methods. All countries and regions in the world, led by the US, are studying the human gastrointestinal microbiome, and many research teams with close cooperation have been formed. The research has been published extensively in microbiology journals and clinical medicine journals, and the highly cited articles mainly describe the relationship between gastrointestinal microorganisms and human health and disease. Regarding the research emphasis, researchers' exploration of the human gastrointestinal microbiome (2011-2013) was at a relatively macro and superficial stage and sought to determine how the gastrointestinal microbiome relates to humans. From 2014 to 2017, increasingly more studies were conducted to determine the interaction between human gastrointestinal flora and various organs and systems. In addition, researchers (2018-2021) focused on the gastrointestinal microbial community and the diversity of certain types of microbes.
    CONCLUSION: Over time, the scope of the research on the clinical uses of the gastrointestinal microbiome gradually increased, and the contents were gradually deepened and developed towards a more precise level. The study of the human gastrointestinal microbiome is an ongoing research hotspot and contributes to human health.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric; Emerging trends; Gastrointestinal microbiome; Human; Research focus; Scopus; Visualized study
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s12967-021-03009-8
  12. Int Orthop. 2021 Aug 02.
       BACKGROUND: Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has been widely used to treat various orthopaedic diseases, and there are a large number of studies on the matter. However, there have been no bibliometric reports on the publications in this field. Bibliometrics is an excellent method to systematically evaluate the current research status of a specific field. In this study, CiteSpace 5.7.R2 software was used to analyse the status, hotspots, and frontiers of PRP in the treatment of orthopaedic diseases in the past 19 years.
    METHODS: All articles about the application of PRP in orthopaedics from 2002 to 2020 were searched from the Web of Science Core Collection. The author, country, institution, journal, cited journal, and keywords were retrieved, and the bibliometric analysis was done in CiteSpace 5.7.R2.
    RESULTS: A total of 321 articles were retrieved. The analysis showed that the number of publications increased in the past 19 years, and the most productive author in this field was Brian J. Cole. The most productive country and the most productive institution were the US and the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, respectively. The journals with the highest output and the highest citation frequency were the Journal of Orthopaedic Research and the American Journal of Sports Medicine, respectively. From the keyword analysis, we observed that the primary research hotspots were the study of the PRP composition, growth factors, and the combination of PRP and mesenchymal stem cells. The frontiers of PRP were in vivo experiments, the treatment of rotator cuff and cartilage injury, and the comparison of clinical efficacy between PRP and hyaluronic acid.
    CONCLUSION: The efficacy of PRP in treating orthopaedic diseases remains controversial. There are still some problems with the experimental methods, such as insufficient sample size, low level of evidence, confusion of system naming, lack of standardisation of preparation methods and application programs, and lack of in-depth basic scientific research. The research status shown by co-occurrence and cluster maps and the analysis of hotspots and frontiers may help solve present problems and explore new directions.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric analysis; CiteSpace; Orthopaedics; Platelet-rich plasma
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s00264-021-05163-6
  13. J Clin Psychol. 2021 Aug 05.
       OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to analyze the characteristics of the COVID-19 publications in the ten psychology-related Web of Science categories in the social science citation index 10-month following the COVID-19 outbreak.
    METHODS: Six publication indicators were examined across authors, institutions, and countries.
    RESULTS: Analyses showed that the United States has produced the highest number of empirical investigations into the psychological impact of COVID-19, and the majority of the research across all countries was in clinical and psychopathology. Distribution of journals and psychology-related Web of Science categories were analyzed. Frequently used words in article title, author keywords, and KeyWords Plus were also presented.
    CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that there are substantial clinical implications associated with COVID-19. There are recommendations offered for future research and clinical practice.
    Keywords:  COVID-19; bibliometric; coronavirus; psychology; social science citation index
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.23227
  14. Front Pharmacol. 2021 ;12 690392
      Background: Extensive studies related to vascular calcification (VC) were conducted in recent years. However, no bibliometric analysis has systematically investigated this topic. Our study aimed to determine the hotspots and frontiers of VC research in the past decade and provide a reference for future scientific research directions and decision-making in the VC field. Methods: VC studies were acquired from the Web of Science Core Collection. Bibliometric and visual analyses were performed using CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and Microsoft Excel software. Results: A total of 8,238 English articles on VC research published in 2011-2020 were obtained. In the past decade, annual publications and citations showed a significant growth trend, especially in 2018-2020. The most productive country, institution, journal and author are the United States, the University of California System, PLOS ONE, and Budoff MJ, respectively. The most frequently cited country, journal, and author are the United States, Journal of the American College of Cardiology, and Floege J, respectively. "Vascular calcification," "atherosclerosis," "chronic kidney disease," and "cardiovascular disease" are the primary keywords. The burst keywords "revascularization," "calciprotein particle," "microRNA," and "microcalcification" are speculated to be the research frontiers. Conclusion: The main research hotspots in the VC field are the molecular mechanisms and prognosis of VC in patients with chronic kidney disease or cardiovascular disease. In addition, endovascular therapy and the development of new drugs targeting signal pathways for VC will become the focus of future research. Moreover, non-coding RNAs related to the diagnosis and treatment of VC are great research prospects.
    Keywords:  VOSviewer6; atherosclerosis3; bibliometrics7; chronic kidney disease2; citespace5; vascular calcification1; vascular smooth muscle cell4
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2021.690392
  15. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Jul 21. pii: 7723. [Epub ahead of print]18(15):
      Nonpoint source pollution (NPS) has become the leading factor of global water quality problems, attracting great attention from governments and researchers in various countries. Based on this situation, understanding the current research status of NPS can help guide future research. However, most of the current reviews only describe the research status of some specific aspects but fail to quantify the research hotspots and development trends on the whole, which limits the overall understanding of NPS. In this paper, bibliometrics was used to study the current status, hotspots, and frontiers of NPS research during 1991-2015, and the future research development was predicted. Over the past 15 years, there has been a remarkable growth trend in publication output, and the participation of countries/territories has also increased. Journal of Environmental Quality, Journal of Hydrology, and Total Environmental Science were the top three journals. Sharpley AN and Arnold JG from the USA were the most productive authors with the best quality articles. The major author clusters and research regions are located in North America and Europe, followed by East Asia. The United States dominates this research field, with the largest number of independent and collaborative articles. Chinese authors gained more attention through international cooperation. Keyword analysis confirmed that water quality and nutrients were the main concerns of NPS pollution research, which mainly involved a number of research topics, such as pollutant emission reduction research and the evaluation and simulation of pollutants' migration and their transformation under different situations, while pesticides were less of a concern, which suggests that the abuse of pesticides has come under control. Meanwhile, SWAT was the dominating model in the last decade partly because it satisfied the growing needs of watershed-scale management.
    Keywords:  bibliometric analysis; geographic distribution; keyword analysis; nonpoint source pollution
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18157723
  16. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2021 Aug 06.
       OBJECTIVES: Research directed at soccer has seen dramatic growth in the last decade. While published research on soccer has shown exponential growth, the proportion of articles addressing females is lagging behind research addressing males. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the literature on soccer, female soccer, and professional female soccer has changed over time.
    METHODS: The Web of Science (WoS) was queried for all "articles" about soccer and association football from 1970 to 2019. This set of records was then queried to collect subsets of papers about females, professional/elite, and female professional/elite. Each of these data subsets was then queried for a number of characteristics and topics. The results were submitted to bibliometric analysis.
    RESULTS: WoS returned 16,822 "articles" about soccer from 1970 to 2019, 3242 of which addressed females. A total of 5924 "articles" about professional players was found, of which 919 had a female focus. Articles about anterior cruciate ligament injuries and concussion were the topics with the highest proportion of papers involving females. Articles directed at selective areas of training and performance were relatively infrequent. Prominent journals, authors, affiliations, and influential papers are presented.
    CONCLUSIONS: A bibliometric analysis of the published research presents a high-level overview of trends in soccer research. Overall, studies about women accounted for around 20% of all soccer research and about 15% of studies on professional players. There were a number of topics where studies on females account for less than 10%-15% of the research on all professionals, and opens opportunities for future study.
    Keywords:  VOSviewer; association football; bibliometrics; females; professional players; soccer
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/sms.14019
  17. J Environ Manage. 2021 Jul 28. pii: S0301-4797(21)01444-4. [Epub ahead of print]297 113382
      To better grasp developments and trends in research on green energy and environmental technologies, the published literatures in the Web of Science Core Collection database from 1998 to 2020 were utilized to reveal critical information and guidance on what has been investigated, and what are the changes in research interests using a bibliometric method. Herein, yearly quantitative distribution of literatures, author contribution and collaboration, productive and influential institutions and countries/territories, co-citation analysis, keywords co-occurrence analysis, and research frontier identification are analyzed via information visualization technology. The results show that the publications on green energy and environmental technologies have grown exponentially, that China, the USA, and Italy are the most active countries, but the global cooperation is not close at present. The research frontier identification results reveal that the categories of energy, wastewater, and performance remain stable, while the trending up and emerging categories of catalyst and CO2 emission show clear shift over the last decade, indicating that catalytic production of clean energy and value-added chemicals, strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and other related studies to solve the global energy crisis and environmental problems are the research frontiers. This bibliometric study provides unique insights and offers research guidance on green energy and environmental technologies.
    Keywords:  Bibliometric study; Environmental technologies; Evolution process; Green energy; Visualization
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.113382
  18. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Jul 29. pii: 8011. [Epub ahead of print]18(15):
      Women make up more than half of the population of every society and are seen as the creators and instructors of the next generation. They are potentially significant human resources in the scientific, social, and cultural development of most countries and, consequently, special attention needs to be paid to the form of their occupational promotion. This paper describes the evolution of research on glass ceiling until July 2020. We compiled a database of 823 articles focused on the field and published in academic journals in the ISI WoS database. Bibliometric methods and techniques were used to describe the evolution of scientific activity, countries, and active institutions, most productive authors, most relevant sources, most influential documents, trend topics, and social structure researched. This determined the state of the art and described the evolution of the literature in this field, and it will help scholars refine existing and initiate new research agendas. A total of 846 documents were identified, and the results showed an upward trend in glass ceiling scientific production. Based on these analyses, possible forms of future research are proposed to advance toward the consolidation of this scientific discipline.
    Keywords:  bibliometric analysis; conceptual structure; gender; glass ceiling
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18158011
  19. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Jul 21. pii: 7748. [Epub ahead of print]18(15):
      Family medicine physicians have been on the front lines of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic; however, research and publications in family medicine journals are rarely discussed. In this study, a bibliometric analysis was conducted on COVID-19-related articles published in PubMed-indexed English language family medicine journals in 2020, which recorded the publication date and author's country and collected citations from Google Scholar. Additionally, we used LitCovid (an open database of COVID-19 literature from PubMed) to determine the content categories of each article and total number of global publications. We found that 33 family medicine journals published 5107 articles in 2020, of which 409 (8.0%) were COVID-19-related articles. Among the article categories, 107 were original articles, accounting for only 26.2% of the articles. In terms of content, the main category was prevention, with 177 articles, accounting for 43.3% of the articles. At the beginning of the epidemic, 10 articles were published in family medicine journals in January 2020, accounting for 11% of all COVID-19-related articles worldwide; however, this accounted for <0.5% of all disciplinary studies in the entire year. Therefore, family medicine journals indeed play a sentinel role, and the intensities and timeliness of COVID-19 publications deserve further investigation.
    Keywords:  bibliometric analyses; coronavirus disease 2019; family medicine
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18157748
  20. Ann Palliat Med. 2021 Jul;10(7): 8003-8014
       BACKGROUND: Infectious disease is ubiquitous and can represent a major threat to human health. Procalcitonin (PCT) is mainly used to identify the severity of bacterial infections, which can be secondary to many non-bacterial infectious diseases. The purpose of this study was to evaluate current research in the field of infectious diseases and to suggest directions for further investigation.
    METHODS: The Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E) database in the Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) was used as the search data source. The search parameters including the search scope were limited to "infectious disease" and the search term was "procalcitonin". The time range of the target literature was 1900 to the final search date of this research (May 7, 2021), and the language was limited to English. The full records of the search results and cited references were exported in plain text format, and Citespace software was used to analyze the documents.
    RESULTS: A total of 996 related research documents were found, and the number increased significantly in 2020. The United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom were the main sources of research, and the main research institutions were Aarhus University Hospital and Harvard University. The main journals are publishing material were Clin Infect Dis, Lancet, and Crit Care Med. Analysis of key words showed that the most common current research topics were sepsis and biomarkers of disease monitoring.
    CONCLUSIONS: Research on infectious disease and the role of PCT is increasing. The main research topics are sepsis and biomarkers for disease monitoring.
    Keywords:  Procalcitonin; biomarkers; infectious diseases; sepsis
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.21037/apm-21-1607
  21. J Neurosurg. 2021 Aug 06. pii: 2021.1.JNS204257. [Epub ahead of print] 1-5
       OBJECTIVE: Scientific productivity, as assessed by publication volume, is a common metric by which the academic neurosurgical field assesses its members. The number of authors per peer-reviewed article has been observed to increase over time across a broad range of medical specialties. This study provides an update to this trend in the neurosurgical literature.
    METHODS: All publications from January 1, 1980, to April 30, 2020, were queried from four neurosurgical journals: Neurosurgery, Journal of Neurosurgery (JNS), JNS: Pediatrics, and JNS: Spine. Publication information was acquired from the National Center for Biotechnology Information Entrez database and reconciled with the Scopus database. Publication type was limited to articles and excluded editorials, letters, and reviews. The number of authors and affiliation counts were determined based on structured abstract fields provided in the two databases.
    RESULTS: Between January 1, 1980, and April 30, 2020, the overall increase in author count for the four neurosurgical journals was 0.12 to 0.18 authors per year (p < 0.001). For Neurosurgery, the mean (SD) author count increased from 2.81 (1.4) in 1980-1985 to 7.97 (4.92) in 2016-2020 (p < 0.001). For the JNS, the mean (SD) author count increased from 2.82 (1.04) in 1980-1985 to 7.6 (3.65) in 2016-2020 (p < 0.001). The percentage of articles with more than 10 authors increased from 0.2% to 22.3% in Neurosurgery and from 1.9% to 17.5% in JNS. Only 28% of the author count variation was explained by an increasing number of institutional or departmental affiliations.
    CONCLUSIONS: Author counts for peer-reviewed articles in neurosurgical academic journals have increased significantly during the past 4 decades, with large increases in the numbers of articles with more than 10 authors in the past 5 years. A total of 28% of the variation in this increase can be explained by an increase in multiinstitutional or multidepartmental studies.
    Keywords:  authorship creep; authorship growth; increasing author count
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3171/2021.1.JNS204257
  22. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Aug 03. pii: 8231. [Epub ahead of print]18(15):
      Myocardial ischemia is the major cause of death worldwide, and reperfusion is the standard intervention for myocardial ischemia. However, reperfusion may cause additional damage, known as myocardial reperfusion injury, for which there is still no effective therapy. This study aims to analyze the landscape of researches concerning myocardial reperfusion injury over the past three decades by machine learning. PubMed was searched for publications from 1990 to 2020 indexed under the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) term "myocardial reperfusion injury" on 13 April 2021. MeSH analysis and Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) analyses were applied to reveal research hotspots. In total, 14,822 publications were collected and analyzed in this study. MeSH analyses revealed that time factors and apoptosis were the leading terms of the pathogenesis and treatment of myocardial reperfusion injury, respectively. In LDA analyses, research topics were classified into three clusters. Complex correlations were observed between topics of different clusters, and the prognosis is the most concerned field of the researchers. In conclusion, the number of publications on myocardial reperfusion injury increases during the past three decades, which mainly focused on prognosis, mechanism, and treatment. Prognosis is the most concerned field, whereas studies on mechanism and treatment are relatively lacking.
    Keywords:  LDA analysis; MeSH term; bibliometric analysis; machine learning; myocardial reperfusion injury
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18158231
  23. J Surg Educ. 2021 Aug 02. pii: S1931-7204(21)00189-6. [Epub ahead of print]
       OBJECTIVE: Advances in surgical training have led to the recent emergence of surgical education research. While the importance of surgical education research is well recognized, not all surgical journals are publishing these works. The objective of this study was to analyze the volume and types of surgical education publications in general surgery and surgical subspecialty journals.
    DESIGN: A PubMed search string was developed to identify surgical education publications in general surgery (GS, n = 10) and surgical subspecialty (SS, n = 16) journals from 2015 to 2019. Publications were catalogued into 7 categories: curriculum and/or teaching, trainee assessment, program evaluation, wellness and/or burnout, resident research, case outcomes with resident involvement, and other. Journals were also categorized by impact factor into 3 groups. Statistical analysis was performed using linear regression and Wilcoxon rank-sum to analyze differences in education publication number and percent between GS and SS journals, as well as between different impact factor groups.
    RESULTS: The median proportion of surgical education publications was 1.2% (IQR 0.3-2.8%) of total publications for journals queried. The highest proportion of surgical education publications by a journal was 13.9%. All other journals had median ≤ 5.5%. GS journals had a significantly higher median percent of surgical education publications than SS journals (2.9% [IQR 1.7-4.8%] vs 0.5% [IQR 0.0-1.4%] p < 0.01). Additionally, no significant differences were found for number of surgical education publications when journals were categorized by IF (p > 0.05).
    CONCLUSIONS: Education research is an important component of the surgical literature, with similar publication rates among journals of different impact factors. Publication volume is higher among general surgery than surgical subspecialty journals. With the ever-changing paradigm of surgical training, a rigorous scientific approach is needed to ensure effective training of future surgeons. Subspecialty journals should promote surgical education research to further understand and develop training in their field.
    Keywords:  Education Literature; Graduate Medical Education; Resident Wellness; Surgical Education
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2021.07.007
  24. Arthroscopy. 2021 Aug;pii: S0749-8063(21)00524-7. [Epub ahead of print]37(8): 2598-2599
      Infographics are an evolving medium within the orthopaedic literature and support engagement of a broad audience than traditional scientific articles. Arthroscopy infographics have been published monthly since January 2019 on a range of topics relevant to the readership. Citation numbers have long been used as a metric for quality and relevance of a scientific article, although alternative metrics (altmetrics) are now available to quantify the online activity related to scholarly content. Altmetrics are defined as "metrics and qualitative data that are complementary to traditional, citation-based metrics," and the altmetric attention score depends on 3 main factors: volume (number of "mentions"), sources (e.g. newspaper, blog, tweet), and author (source of the "mention", e.g. physician vs journal). Recent research links altmetric scores to citation gains. Infographics are a tool for expanding, educating, and increasing the breadth of medical journal readership.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arthro.2021.05.038
  25. J Headache Pain. 2021 Aug 03. 22(1): 88
      
    Keywords:  Clarivate Analytics; Impact factor; Indexing; Journal Citation Reports
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1186/s10194-021-01288-6
  26. Res Dev Disabil. 2021 Jul 29. pii: S0891-4222(21)00180-3. [Epub ahead of print]117 104031
       BACKGROUND: Developmental disabilities have been largely studied in the past years. Their etiological mechanisms have been underpinned to the interactions between genetic and environmental factors. These factors show variability across the world. Thus, it is important to understand where the set of knowledge obtained on developmental disabilities originates from and whether it is generalizable to low- and middle-income countries.
    AIMS: This study aims to understand the origins of the available literature on developmental disabilities, keeping a focus on parenting, and identify the main trend of research.
    METHODS AND PROCEDURE: A sample of 11,315 publications from 1936 to 2020 were collected from Scopus and a graphical country analysis was conducted. Furthermore, a qualitative approach enabled the clustering of references by keywords into four main areas: "Expression of the disorder", "Physiological Factors", "How it is studied" and "Environmental factors". For each area, a document co-citation analysis (DCA) on CiteSpace software was performed.
    OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Results highlight the leading role of North America in the study of developmental disabilities. Trends in the literature and the documents' scientific relevance are discussed in details.
    CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Results demand for investigation in different socio-economical settings to generalize our knowledge. What this paper adds? The current paper tries to provide insight into the origins of the literature on developmental disabilities with a focus on parenting, together with an analysis of the trends of research in the field. The paper consisted of a multi-disciplinary and multi-method review. In fact, the review tried to integrate the analysis of the relation between developmental disabilities with a closer look at the scientific contributions to the field across the world. Specifically, the paper integrates a total of 11,315 papers published on almost a century of research (from 1936 to 2020). An initial qualitative analysis on keywords was combined to a subsequent quantitative approach in order to maximize the comprehension of the impact of almost a century of scientific contributions. Specifically, documents were studied with temporal and structural metrics on a scientometric approach. This allowed the exploration of patterns within the literature available on Scopus in a quantitative way. This method not only assessed the importance of single documents within the network. As a matter of fact, the document co-citation analysis used on CiteSpace software provided insight into the relations existing between multiple documents in the field of research. As a result, the leading role of North America in the literature of developmental disabilities and parenting emerged. This was accompanied by the review of the main trends of research within the existing literature.
    Keywords:  CiteSpace; Country analysis; Developmental disabilities; Document co-citation analysis; Parenting; Scientometric review
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2021.104031
  27. Front Neurol. 2021 ;12 670220
      Alzheimer's disease (AD) is currently one of the main diseases afflicting the elderly in the world. In recent years, more and more studies have shown that brain energy metabolism disorders are the key pathogenic factors and main early pathological features of AD. Many risk factors such as insulin resistance, mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, Aβ-amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles of hyperphosphorylated tau, aging, and neuroinflammation are involved in brain energy metabolism disorders. In this study, 1,379 Web of Science publications on the mechanisms of brain energy metabolism disorders in AD, all published from 2000 to 2020, were analyzed. Some network maps were drawn using CiteSpace and VOSviewer software which can be used to clarify research focus, forecast research frontiers and development trends, and provide different perspectives and characteristics in AD brain energy metabolism disorder mechanisms.
    Keywords:  Alzheimer's disease; CiteSpace; VOSviewer; Web of Science; bibliometric analysis; brain energy metabolism
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2021.670220
  28. Int J Pharm Pract. 2021 Aug 06. pii: riab051. [Epub ahead of print]
       OBJECTIVE: To provide an overview of pharmacy practice research by faculties of pharmacy in the Arab region using a bibliometric methodology.
    METHOD: Relevant articles were retrieved from SciVerse Scopus. The search strategy was developed to retrieve all articles published in pharmacy practice journals and those with specific keywords such as 'clinical pharmacy', 'community pharmacy', 'hospital pharmacy', 'pharmacy education' and 'pharmacy practice'. The country affiliation function was used to limit the results to the Arab region.
    KEY FINDINGS: The search strategy found 1496 articles authored by 8210 researchers and disseminated through 337 journals. Research on pharmacy practice produced by faculties of pharmacy in the Arab region (1) has experienced a steep growth over the last decade; (2) is mainly published by scholars in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates; (3) has benefited from non-Arab scholars affiliated with faculties of pharmacy in the Arab Gulf; (4) has benefited from international collaborations, specifically with researchers in the UK and Malaysia; (5) has mainly addressed seven research topics: adverse drug reactions and pharmacovigilance, medication adherence, self-medication, patient counselling, pharmacy education, perception of physicians towards pharmacists; (6) has shown a relationship between institutional funding and research output and (7) has shown the highest number of readers for topics related to polypharmacy, over-the-counter medications, self-medications, medication adherence and pharmacist intervention in disease management.
    CONCLUSION: Pharmacy practice research in Arab countries has witnessed a steep rise in the last decade, partially due to international research collaboration.
    Keywords:  Arab countries; bibliometrics; pharmacy practice; research activity
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpp/riab051
  29. Pain Pract. 2021 Aug 05.
       BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Studies with non-significant results are less likely to be published or published in lower impact factor journals. To determine whether a similar phenomenon occurs in pain literature, we explored impact factor bias in peer-reviewed pain journals.
    METHODS: A PubMed search involving randomized controlled trials in pain journals during 2012 through 2018 was performed. The primary outcome was the publication impact factor (IF). Exclusion criteria included commentaries, editorials, meta-analyses, reviews and animal studies. The average impact factor for each journal was determined. The primary independent variable was a study with a positive outcome.
    RESULTS: Of the 9 journals evaluated, 1,108 articles met our inclusion criteria and were included in our analysis. The quartiles for the impact factor for the journals included were 2.5, 2.9 and 3.6. A multivariate analysis identified sample size greater than 100, description of a sample size calculation, presence of a stated hypothesis, and presence of sponsorship funding as independent predictors of publication in a journal with greater impact factor. In contrast, positive results were not associated with publication in a greater impact factor journal, even when forced into the model, P= 0.49.
    CONCLUSIONS: After adjusting for study factors associated with publication, there is no evidence of impact factor bias within the pain literature. The lack of impact factor bias in the pain literature is a positive finding for the field and should benefit scientific development and the clinical care of patients.
    Keywords:  Chronic pain; Education; Pain management
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/papr.13065
  30. Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2021 Aug 05.
      The processing of rice (Oryza sativa L.) generates large quantities of lignocellulosic wastes termed rice husks (RH). Numerous researchers have proposed biomass gasification as the panacea to the waste disposal and management challenges posed by RH. However, a comprehensive analysis of RH gasification is required to examine the research landscape and future directions on the area. The research landscape and global developments on RH gasification from 1995 to 2019 are examined through bibliometric analysis of 228 publications extracted from the Web of Science. Bioresource Technology is considered the most influential journal on the topic, whereas China is the most productive nation due to government policies and research funding. The most productive organization is the Harbin Institute of Technology, which is due to the significant contributions of Zhao YiJun and co-workers. Keyword analysis revealed three crucial research themes: gasification, biomass, and rice husks. The literature revealed that the syngas yield, distribution, and performance of RH gasification are significantly influenced by temperature, equivalence ratio, selected reactor, and gasifying medium. The techno-economic analysis of RH gasification revealed that government interventions such as high sales rates and low investment costs could enhance the commercial viability of the technology. Furthermore, the integration of RH gasification with carbon capture utilization and storage could promote the decarbonization of power plants, negative emissions, and net-zero climate goals. Overall, the paper provides valuable information for future researchers to identify strategic collaborators, journal publications, and research frontiers yet unexplored.
    Keywords:  Biomass; Carbon capture; Carbon nanomaterials; Sustainable development goals; Techno-economic analysis; VOSViewer; Web of Science
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15761-x
  31. PLoS One. 2021 ;16(8): e0255849
      References are employed in most academic research papers to give credits and to reflect scholarliness. With the upsurge in academic publications in recent decades, we are curious to know how the number of references cited per research article has changed across different disciplines over that time. The results of our study showed significant linear growth in reference density in eight disciplinary categories between 1980 and 2019 indexed in Web of Science. It appears that reference saturation is not yet in sight. Overall, the general increase in the number of publications and the advanced accessibility of the Internet and digitized documents may have promoted the growth in references in certain fields. However, the seemingly runaway tendency should be well appreciated and objectively assessed. We suggest that authors focus on their research itself rather than on political considerations during the process of writing, especially the selection of important references to cite.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255849
  32. Front Neurosci. 2021 ;15 706105
      Background: Among the effective approaches developed for blood-brain barrier (BBB) opening, ultrasound is recognized as a non-invasive technique that can induce localized BBB opening transiently and repeatedly. This technique has aroused broad attention from researchers worldwide, and numerous articles have been published recently. However, no existing study has systematically examined this field from a scientometric perspective. The aim of this study was to summarize the knowledge structure and identify emerging trends and potential hotspots in this field. Methods: Publications related to ultrasound-induced BBB opening published from 1998 to 2020 were retrieved from Web of Science Core Collection. The search strategies were as follows: topic: ("blood brain barrier" OR "BBB") AND topic: (ultrasound OR ultrason* OR acoustic* OR sonopora*). The document type was set to articles or reviews with language restriction to English. Three different analysis tools including one online platform, VOS viewer1.6.16, and CiteSpace V5.7.R2 software were used to conduct this scientometric study. Results: A total of 1,201 valid records were included in the final analysis. The majority of scientific publication was produced by authors from North America, Eastern Asia, and Western Europe. Ultrasound in Medicine and Biology was the most prominent journal. The USA, China, and Canada were the most productive countries. Hynynen K, and Mcdannold N were key researchers with considerable academic influence. According to analysis of keywords, four main research directions were identified: cluster 1 (microbubbles study), cluster 2 (management of intracranial tumors), cluster 3 (ultrasound parameters and mechanisms study), and cluster 4 (treatment of neurodegenerative diseases). The current research hotspot has shifted from the basic research of ultrasound and microbubbles to management of intracranial tumors and neurodegenerative diseases. Burst detection analysis showed that Parkinson's disease, doxorubicin, gold nanoparticle, glioblastoma, gene therapy, and Alzheimer's disease may continue to be the research frontiers. Conclusion: Ultrasound-induced BBB opening research is in a period of robust development. This study is a starting point, providing a comprehensive overview, development landscape, and future opportunities of this technology, which standout as a useful reference for researchers and decision makers interested in this area.
    Keywords:  CiteSpace; VOS viewer; blood-brain barrier; knowledge structure; research frontiers; scientometric; ultrasound
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2021.706105
  33. Comput Biol Med. 2021 Jul 19. pii: S0010-4825(21)00454-6. [Epub ahead of print]135 104660
      The growth of artificial intelligence in promoting healthcare is rapidly progressing. Notwithstanding its promising nature, however, AI in healthcare embodies certain ethical challenges as well. This research aims to delineate the most influential elements of scientific research on AI ethics in healthcare by conducting bibliometric, social network analysis, and cluster-based content analysis of scientific articles. Not only did the bibliometric analysis identify the most influential authors, countries, institutions, sources, and documents, but it also recognized four ethical concerns associated with 12 medical issues. These ethical categories are composed of normative, meta-ethics, epistemological and medical practice. The content analysis complemented this list of ethical categories and distinguished seven more ethical categories: ethics of relationships, medico-legal concerns, ethics of robots, ethics of ambient intelligence, patients' rights, physicians' rights, and ethics of predictive analytics. This analysis likewise identified 40 general research gaps in the literature and plausible future research strands. This analysis furthers conversations on the ethics of AI and associated emerging technologies such as nanotech and biotech in healthcare, hence, advances convergence research on the ethics of AI in healthcare. Practically, this research will provide a map for policymakers and AI engineers and scientists on what dimensions of AI-based medical interventions require stricter policies and guidelines and robust ethical design and development.
    Keywords:  Artificial intelligence; Bibliometric analysis; Content analysis; Ethics; Healthcare; Network visualization; Robotics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compbiomed.2021.104660
  34. Am J Surg. 2021 Jul 24. pii: S0002-9610(21)00418-9. [Epub ahead of print]
       BACKGROUND: Women account for 19 % of practicing surgeons in the United States, with representation decreasing with higher academic rank. Less is known about the proportion of women in editorial leadership positions at surgical journals. The objective of this study was to examine gender representation among editorial leadership at high-impact surgical journals.
    METHODS: The five journals with the highest impact factors in general, cardiothoracic, plastics, otolaryngology, orthopedics, urology, vascular, and neurosurgery were identified. Data were abstracted on the proportion of women editors-in-chief (EIC) and editorial board members between 2010 and 2020 to determine how these demographics changed over time.
    RESULTS: Multiple fields had no women EIC over the past decade (orthopedics, urology, cardiothoracic, neurosurgery). In all other fields, women were a minority of EIC. In 2020, women made up 7.9 % of EIC and 11.1 % of editorial boards in surgical journals.
    CONCLUSIONS: Women remain under-represented among leadership at high-impact surgical journals, with varying improvement over the past decade among different subspecialties.
    Keywords:  Academic surgery; Disparities; Editorial board; Gender
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjsurg.2021.07.038
  35. Foods. 2021 Jul 20. pii: 1673. [Epub ahead of print]10(7):
      This review maps the global research landscape of the public health implications of Arcobacter from the food-environment interphase using content analytics and integrated science mapping. The search term "Arcobacter" was used to retrieve relevant articles published in Web of Science and Scopus between 1991 to 2019. The number of articles included in the review was 524, with 1304 authors, 172 journal sources, and a collaborative index of 2.55. The annual growth rate of the publications was 9.74%. The most contributing author in the field was Houf K., with 40 publications, 26 h-index, and 2020 total citations. The most productive country was the USA (13.33%). The majority of the articles were published in English (96%) and in the Journal of Food Protection (8.02%). The highest research outputs were in the field of Microbiology (264). The frequently occurred keywords were Arcobacter, poultry, shellfish, cattle, and chicken. This study revealed a fair increase in the growth rate of Arcobacter-related research-especially in the area of isolation and detection of the pathogen in foods and food environments, as well as the pathogenesis and genetic diversity of the pathogen. Research themes in the area of prevalence and epidemiology seem to be underexplored.
    Keywords:  Arcobacter; emerging pathogen; enteric bacteria; environment; food safety; gastrointestinal disease; public health
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3390/foods10071673
  36. Pain. 2021 Aug 03.
       ABSTRACT: Several different reporting biases cited in scientific literature have raised concerns about the overestimation of effects and the subsequent potential impact on the practice of evidence-based medicine and human health. Up to 7-8% of the population experiences neuropathic pain, and established treatment guidelines are based predominately on published, clinical trial results. Therefore, we examined published randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of first-line drugs for neuropathic pain and assessed the relative proportions with statistically significant (i.e., positive) and non-significant (i.e., negative) results and their rates of citation. We determined the relationships between reported study outcome and the frequency of their citations with journal impact factor, sample size, time to publication after study completion, and study quality metrics. We also examined the association of study outcome with maximum study drug dosage and conflict of interest. We found that of 107 published RCTs, 68.2% reported a statistically significant outcome regarding drug efficacy for chronic peripheral and central neuropathic pain. Positive studies were cited nearly twice as often as negative studies in the literature (P=0.01), despite similar study sample size, quality metrics, and publication in journals with similar impact factors. The time to publication, journal impact factor, and conflict of interest did not differ statistically between positive and negative studies. Our observations that negative and positive RCTs were published in journals with similar impact at comparable time-lags after study completion are encouraging. However, the citation bias for positive studies could affect the validity and generalization of conclusions in literature and potentially influence clinical practice.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1097/j.pain.0000000000002426
  37. Sci Rep. 2021 Aug 03. 11(1): 15747
      Target identification and prioritisation are prominent first steps in modern drug discovery. Traditionally, individual scientists have used their expertise to manually interpret scientific literature and prioritise opportunities. However, increasing publication rates and the wider routine coverage of human genes by omic-scale research make it difficult to maintain meaningful overviews from which to identify promising new trends. Here we propose an automated yet flexible pipeline that identifies trends in the scientific corpus which align with the specific interests of a researcher and facilitate an initial prioritisation of opportunities. Using a procedure based on co-citation networks and machine learning, genes and diseases are first parsed from PubMed articles using a novel named entity recognition system together with publication date and supporting information. Then recurrent neural networks are trained to predict the publication dynamics of all human genes. For a user-defined therapeutic focus, genes generating more publications or citations are identified as high-interest targets. We also used topic detection routines to help understand why a gene is trendy and implement a system to propose the most prominent review articles for a potential target. This TrendyGenes pipeline detects emerging targets and pathways and provides a new way to explore the literature for individual researchers, pharmaceutical companies and funding agencies.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-94897-9
  38. Int J Paleopathol. 2021 Aug 03. pii: S1879-9817(21)00066-8. [Epub ahead of print]34 217-222
       OBJECTIVES: The aim is to provide an overview of the nature of the content of palaeopathology articles in the International Journal of Paleopathology during the first ten years of publication (2011-2020), and to compare these results with those from other similar journals.
    METHODS: The method used is bibliometry of International Journal of Paleopathology plus nine other periodicals publishing in the field of osteoarchaeology / palaeopathology. In these ten journals, 2513 publications in human osteology are reviewed of which 1032 are devoted specifically or substantially to palaeopathology.
    RESULTS: International Journal of Paleopathology has attracted a large number of palaeopathology publications, but this has not been at the expense of extant journals. Its appearance appears to have coincided with an expansion of the discipline, and it may also act as a focus for publication for articles that would not previously have found a venue. Its output is distinctive from other journals assessed, with greater emphasis on review articles (including those focusing on method and theory in palaeopathology) and, especially, on case reports.
    SIGNIFICANCE: International Journal of Paleopathology acts as a focal point for publications from diverse areas of the field. The connection with the Paleopathology Association provides a conduit by which outcomes of debates within the profession concerning future priorities for the field (e.g. development of method and theory; the status of the case report within the discipline) can be reflected in journal policy.
    LIMITATIONS: Palaeopathology and other osteoarchaeology articles are published in venues other than those analysed in the current work.
    Keywords:  Case report; Method; Population study; Publication analysis; Review article; Theory
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpp.2021.07.007
  39. ScientificWorldJournal. 2021 ;2021 9998924
      A systematic literature review of publications from 2000 to 2020 was carried out to identify research trends on adsorbent materials for the removal of caffeine from aqueous solutions. Publications were retrieved from three databases (Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar). Words "adsorption AND caffeine" were examined into titles, abstracts, and keywords. A brief bibliometric analysis was performed with emphasis on the type of publication and of most cited articles. Materials for the removal of caffeine were classified according to the type of material into three main groups: organic, inorganic, and composites, each of them subdivided into different subgroups consistent with their origin or production. Tables resume for each subgroup of adsorbents the key information: specific surface area, dose, pH, maximum adsorption capacity, and isotherm models for the removal of caffeine. The highest adsorption capacities were achieved by organic adsorbents, specifically those with granular activated carbon (1961.3 mg/g) and grape stalk activated carbon (916.7 mg/g). Phenyl-phosphate-based porous organic polymer (301 mg/g), natural sandy loam sediment (221.2 mg/g), composites of MCM-48 encapsulated graphene oxide (153.8 mg/g), and organically modified clay (143.7 mg/g) showed adsorption capacities lower than those of activated carbons. In some activated carbons, a relation between the specific surface area (SSA) and the maximum adsorption capacity (Q max) was found.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/9998924
  40. Front Neurol. 2021 ;12 693937
      Background: Spin refers to reporting practices that could distort the interpretation and mislead readers by being more optimistic than the results justify, thereby possibly changing the perception of clinicians and influence their decisions. Because of the clinical importance of accurate interpretation of results and the evidence of spin in other research fields, we aim to identify the nature and frequency of spin in published reports of tinnitus randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and to assess possible determinants and effects of spin. Methods: We searched PubMed systematically for RCTs with tinnitus-related outcomes published from 2015 to 2019. All eligible articles were assessed on actual and potential spin using prespecified criteria. Results: Our search identified 628 studies, of which 87 were eligible for evaluation. A total of 95% of the studies contained actual or potential spin. Actual spin was found mostly in the conclusion of articles, which reflected something else than the reported point estimate (or CI) of the outcome (n = 34, 39%) or which was selectively focused (n = 49, 56%). Linguistic spin ("trend," "marginally significant," or "tendency toward an effect") was found in 17% of the studies. We were not able to assess the association between study characteristics and the occurrence of spin due to the low number of trials for some categories of the study characteristics. We found no effect of spin on type of journal [odds ratio (OR) -0.13, 95% CI -0.56-0.31], journal impact factor (OR 0.17, 95% CI -0.18-0.51), or number of citations (OR 1.95, CI -2.74-6.65). Conclusion: There is a large amount of spin in tinnitus RCTs. Our findings show that there is room for improvement in reporting and interpretation of results. Awareness of different forms of spin must be raised to improve research quality and reduce research waste.
    Keywords:  SPIN; methods; quality; randomized controlled trial; tinnitus
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2021.693937
  41. Aesthetic Plast Surg. 2021 Aug 04.
       BACKGROUND: We evaluated metrics between academic plastic surgeons that were and were not presidents of national organizations to determine predictors of becoming a president.
    METHODS: A cross-sectional retrospective review was performed. Websites were queried of 99 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education accredited plastic surgery residency programs and 17 national organizations. Demographic, academic and scholarly variables we collected from 951 full-time plastic surgery faculty affiliated with the US residency training programs during the 2020-2021 academic year. Of these full-time plastic surgery faculty, 879 were non-presidents and 72 were presidents of national organizations (2016-2021 = 42, < 2016 = 30).
    RESULTS: Plastic surgeons were more likely to become president if they were an officer/director of the American Board of Plastic Surgeons (ABPS) (OR: 16.67, 95%CI: 5.83, 47.66; p < 0.001), chief/chair of a division/department (OR: 3.10, 95%CI: 1.09, 8.79; p = 0.033), endowed (OR: 5.45, 95%CI:1.65, 18.04; p = 0.006), National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded (OR: 4.57, 95%CI: 1.24, 16.88; p = 0.023), affiliated with an integrated plastic surgery residency program (OR: 3.96, 95%CI: 1.27, 12.33; p = 0.018), and with a greater number of years in practice (OR: 1.09, 95%CI: 1.04, 1.14; p < 0.001). Additionally, plastic surgeons were more likely to become president between 2016 and 2021 with a research fellowship (OR: 7.41, 95%CI: 1.02, 52.63; p = 0.047), first author publications (OR: 1.72, 95%CI: 1.63, 1.83; p < 0.001), and last author publications (OR: 1.60, 95%CI: 1.56, 1.65; p  < 0.001).
    CONCLUSIONS: Plastic surgeons were more likely to become president of a national organization if they were an officer/director of the ABPS, chief/chair of a division/department, endowed, NIH funded, affiliated with an integrated plastic surgery residency program, greater number of years in practice, research fellowship, and first and last author publications. Predictors may guide those interested in becoming president of a national organization.
    LEVEL OF EVIDENCE V: This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine Ratings, please refer to Table of Contents or online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266 .
    Keywords:  Benchmarking; Education; Faculty; Graduate; Leadership; Medical; Plastic; Surgeons; Surgery
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s00266-021-02491-1
  42. PLoS One. 2021 ;16(8): e0255604
       BACKGROUND: Public health policies and recommendations aim to be informed by the best available evidence. Evidence underpinning e-cigarettes policy recommendations has been necessarily limited due to the novelty of the technology and the lack of long-term epidemiological studies and trials. Some public health bodies have actively encouraged e-cigarette use whilst others have raised concerns over introducing new health risks and renormalising tobacco smoking. Using citation network analysis we investigated the author conflicts of interest and study funding statements within sources of evidence used by public health bodies when making recommendations about e-cigarette policy.
    METHODS: We conducted citation network analysis of public health recommendation documents across four purposively selected diverse jurisdictions: WHO, UK, Australia, and USA. We extracted all citations from 15 public health recommendation documents, with more detailed data collected for influential citations (used in 3+ recommendation documents). We analysed the relationships between the sources of evidence used across jurisdictions using block modelling to determine if similar groups of documents were used across different jurisdictions. We assessed the frequency and nature of conflicts of interest.
    RESULTS: 1700 unique citations were included across the 15 public health recommendation documents, with zero to 923 citations per document (median = 63, IQR = 7.5-132). The evidence base underpinning public health recommendations did not systematically differ across jurisdictions. Of the 1700 citations included, the majority were journal articles (n = 1179). Across 1081 journal articles published between 1998-2018, 200 declared a conflict of interest, 288 contained no mention of conflicts of interest, and 593 declared none. Conflicts of interest were reported with tobacco (3%; n = 37 journal articles of 1081), e-cigarette (7%; n = 72), and pharmaceutical companies (12%; n = 127), with such conflicts present even in the most recent years. There were 53 influential citations, the most common study type was basic science research without human subjects (e.g. examination of aerosols and e-liquids) (n = 18) followed by systematic review (n = 10); with randomised control trial being least common (n = 4). Network analysis identified clusters of highly-cited articles with a higher prevalence of conflicts of interest.
    CONCLUSION: Public health bodies across different jurisdictions drew upon similar sources of evidence, despite articulating different policy approaches to e-cigarettes. The evidence drawn upon, including the most influential evidence, contained substantial conflicts of interest (including relationships with e-cigarette and tobacco industries). Processes to explicitly manage conflicts of interest arising from the underlying evidence base may be required when developing public health recommendations.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0255604
  43. J Med Internet Res. 2021 Jul 08.
       BACKGROUND: SARS-CoV-2 is one of the most threatening pandemics in human history. As of the date of this analysis, it claimed about two million lives worldwide and the number is rising sharply. Governments, societies, and scientists are equally challenged under this burden.
    OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to map global coronavirus research in 2020 according to various influencing factors to highlight incentives or necessities for further research.
    METHODS: The application of established and advances bibliometric methods combined with the visualization technique of Density Equalizing Mapping provided a global picture of incentives and efforts on coronavirus research in 2020. Countries' funding patterns and their epidemiological and socio-economic characteristics were included, as well as their publication performance data.
    RESULTS: Research output exploded in 2020 with momentum, including citation and networking parameters. China and the USA were the countries with the highest publication performance. Globally, however, publication output correlated significantly with COVID-19 cases. Research funding has also increased immensely.
    CONCLUSIONS: Nonetheless, the abrupt decline in publication efforts following previous corona epidemics should demonstrate to global researchers that they should not lose interest even after containment, as the next epidemiological challenge is certain to come. Validated reporting worldwide and the inclusion of low-income countries are additionally important for a successful future research strategy.
    CLINICALTRIAL:
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2196/30692
  44. J Comp Psychol. 2021 Aug 05.
      Comparative psychology, and particularly the Journal of Comparative Psychology, has been criticized for a lack of taxon diversity. The nature and consequences of the critiques are discussed and assessed by analyzing the representation of nonavian reptiles in the journal over its 100-year existence. Although reptiles are indeed rare in the journal, their representation has greatly increased in recent decades, and especially since about 1980. More interestingly, the mix among the major reptilian groups: turtles, lizards, snakes, and crocodylians, has shifted. First turtles predominated in studies, but in recent decades, snakes were far more prominent. In the last 50 years of the journal, there were 10 times the number of articles on snakes than in the first 50 years, turtles declined, and lizards increased greatly, although their totals remained less than half the number of snake articles. Crocodylians only appeared in the first several volumes in the 1920s and never again. The predominance of snakes, not known for their cognitive prowess, in a journal viewed increasingly as an outlet for work on comparative cognition, is discussed. Finally, it appears that the low representation of reptile behavioral research is not peculiar to the Journal of Comparative Psychology, but animal behavior journals more generally. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1037/com0000290
  45. Nature. 2021 Aug 05.
      
    Keywords:  Careers; Peer review; Publishing
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-02147-9