Impact of Early Research Productivity on Future Academic Output Among Head and Neck Fellows.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the impact of pre-fellowship publications on future research productivity and career placement among head and neck (H&N) surgery fellowship graduates. METHODS: H&N surgery fellowship graduates between 2014 and 2022 were identified from publicly available data. Timing of fellowship graduation, number of publications during each stage of education and training, and number of first authorship publications were analyzed for association with scholarly productivity and academic career placement. RESULTS: In our analysis of 409 H&N fellowship graduates, there was a strong positive correlation between the year of fellowship graduation and the average number of publications in residency (R2 = 0.82) and fellowship (R2 = 0.79). Graduates producing more than the average of 2.37 publications prior to residency had a significantly higher average number of publications during residency and fellowship compared to those who published below average (p < 0.001). A higher number of publications prior to and during residency were both independently associated with a higher likelihood of academic career placement (p = 0.015 and p = 0.002, respectively). More first-author publications prior to residency were associated with a higher number of publications during residency and fellowship (p = 0.015). In sub-analyses, gender did not impact the average number of publications during residency and fellowship. Similarly, the COVID-19 pandemic did not significantly impact the average number of publications during the fellowship when comparing the classes of 2020-2022 to 2017-2019. CONCLUSION: Research productivity among H&N fellowship graduates has increased in recent years. Research productivity in medical school and residency is associated with scholarly output in later stages of training and academic career placement. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: NA Laryngoscope, 134:3165-3169, 2024.

Two decades of neuroscience publication trends in Africa.

Neuroscience research in Africa remains sparse. Devising new policies to boost Africa's neuroscience landscape is imperative, but these must be based on accurate data on research outputs which is largely lacking. Such data must reflect the heterogeneity of research environments across the continent's 54 countries. Here, we analyse neuroscience publications affiliated with African institutions between 1996 and 2017. Of 12,326 PubMed indexed publications, 5,219 show clear evidence that the work was performed in Africa and led by African-based researchers - on average ~5 per country and year. From here, we extract information on journals and citations, funding, international coauthorships and techniques used. For reference, we also extract the same metrics from 220 randomly selected publications each from the UK, USA, Australia, Japan and Brazil. Our dataset provides insights into the current state of African neuroscience research in a global context.

Geographic, Subject, and Authorship Trends among LMIC-based Scientific Publications in High-impact Global Health and General Medicine Journals: A 30-Month Bibliometric Analysis.

The globalization of medical research and global health's increasing popularity worldwide have resulted in greater geographic, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity of studies published in the scientific literature. Yet the geographic distribution, authorship representation, and subject trends among Low-/Low-Middle-Income Country (LIC/LMIC)-based scientific publications remain largely unknown. This analysis assesses these gaps in knowledge. We performed a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of all scientific articles published between January 2014 and June 2016 in the four most prominent general medicine and five most prominent general global health journals based on impact factor. The African region, containing 24% of the global LIC/LMIC population, accounted for 49.9% of all publications. Corresponding authors with either exclusive or joint appointment to a LIC/LMIC institution were present in 26.2% of all included articles. Over one-quarter (28.8%) of all publications did not list a local author. Nearly two-thirds (62.1%) of articles published in global health journals and roughly half (52.4%) in general medicine journals involved infectious diseases. Non-HIV infectious disease studies were by far the most frequent subject areas across all journals. The trends identified in this study may help to inform the evolution and prioritization of future research efforts, thereby allowing global health to remain truly global.

Bibliometric analysis of the 100 most cited articles on cervical cancer radiotherapy.

PURPOSE: To identify the 100 most cited research articles on cervical cancer radiotherapy. METHODS: The Web of Science and Scopus databases were searched to identify the 100 most cited articles on cervical cancer radiotherapy as of September 29, 2019. Articles were ranked based on the total citations received from 2 databases. One hundred articles about radiotherapy for cervical cancer were identified. The following important information was extracted: author, journal, year and month of publication, country or region, and radiotherapy technologies. RESULTS: The 100 most cited articles on cervical cancer radiotherapy were published between 1964 and 2016, and the total citations from 2 databases ranged from 3478 to 211, including a total of 49,262 citations as of September 29, 2019. The index of citations per year ranged from 170.4 to 13.1. These articles were from 16 countries or regions, with most publications being from the United States (n = 38), followed by Austria (n = 15), Canada (n = 8), France (n = 8) and the United Kingdom (n = 7). The International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics produced the most articles (n = 42), followed by Radiotherapy and Oncology (n = 13), Cancer (n = 8) and Journal of Clinical Oncology (n = 7). These articles were categorized as original studies (n = 86), recommendations (n = 5), guidelines (n = 5) and reviews (n = 4). Of the 100 most cited articles, intracavitary brachytherapy (n = 50) and 3-dimensional conformal radiotherapy (n = 34) were the most commonly used treatment techniques. CONCLUSION: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report and analysis of the most cited articles on cervical cancer radiotherapy. This bibliographic study presents the history of technological development in external radiation therapy and brachytherapy. Brachytherapy is an indispensable part of radiotherapy for cervical cancer. The International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics is the journal with the most publications related to cervical cancer radiotherapy.

A network analysis of research productivity by country, discipline, and wealth.

INTRODUCTION: Research productivity has been linked to a country's intellectual and economic wealth. Further analysis is needed to assess the association between the distribution of research across disciplines and the economic status of countries. METHODS: By using 55 years of data, spanning 1962 to 2017, of Elsevier publications across a large set of research disciplines and countries globally, this manuscript explores the relationship and evolution of relative research productivity across different disciplines through a network analysis. It also explores the associations of those with economic productivity categories, as measured by the World Bank economic classification. Additional analysis of discipline similarities is possible by exploring the cross-country evolution of those disciplines. RESULTS: Results show similarities in the relative importance of research disciplines among most high-income countries, with larger idiosyncrasies appearing among the remaining countries. This group of high-income countries shows similarities in the dynamics of the relative distribution of research productivity over time, forming a stable research productivity cluster. Lower income countries form smaller, more independent and evolving clusters, and differ significantly from each other and from higher income countries in the relative importance of their research emphases. Country-based similarities in research productivity profiles also appear to be influenced by geographical proximity. CONCLUSIONS: This new form of analyses of research productivity, and its relation to economic status, reveals novel insights to the dynamics of the economic and research structure of countries. This allows for a deeper understanding of the role a country's research structure may play in shaping its economy, and also identification of benchmark resource allocations across disciplines for developing countries.

National Institutes of Health Research Plan on Rehabilitation: Analysis and Progress.

OBJECTIVE: To summarize the progress toward the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Plan on Rehabilitation goals and the methods by which tracking occurred. DESIGN: Each grant award was manually coded by NIH staff for research plan goals, type of science categories (eg, basic, applied, infrastructure, etc), and if applicable, training, and then validated by NIH institute and center (IC) experts. Data for years 2015 through 2017 were used to develop a coding algorithm to automatically code grants in 2018 for validation by NIH IC experts. Additional data for all years (2015-2018) were also analyzed to track changes and progress. SETTING: The research utilized administrative data from NIH Reporter and internal NIH databases. PARTICIPANTS: The data sample included research grants and programs funded from fiscal years 2015 through 2018. The year 2015 was considered a baseline year as the research plan was published in 2016. INTERVENTIONS: Not applicable. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The primary outcome measures were substantial growth in NIH funding and numbers of awards for rehabilitation research, across most research plan goals and types of science, as well as validation of an automatic algorithm for coding grants. RESULTS: Number of grants, funding dollars, funding mechanisms, patent data, scientific influence and translational science, research plan goals, and type of science categories were tracked across years (2015-2018). Algorithm validation is presented for 2018 data. CONCLUSIONS: NIH advanced the goals stated in the Research Plan on Rehabilitation, but gap areas remain. Though funding in this portfolio is growing, continued focus and participation by the field is needed to advance rehabilitation science.

A Bibliometric Analysis of Publications on Spinal Cord Injury During 1980-2018.

BACKGROUND: Spinal cord injury (SCI) could cause motor, sensory loss, severe functional insufficiency, and social problems. This study aims to provide a holistic summary of the global scientific outputs about SCI through bibliometric analyses and reveal the trend topics. METHODS: All publications about SCI published between 1980 and 2018 in Web of Science (WoS) index were downloaded (Access date: 01.09.2019) and analyzed using bibliometric methods. In the Title search section in WoS, the documents with the words "spinal cord injury" were identified. Correlation analysis between SCI publication productivity and economic development indicators of the world countries were analyzed using the Spearman correlation coefficient. RESULTS: There were 20,322 publications, 13,662 of which were articles. The top 3 productive countries were the USA, China, and Canada. British Columbia (403; 2.9%), Toronto (401; 2.9%), and Miami (387; 2.8%) were the prominent cities. The top productive journals were Spinal Cord (1,399; 10.24%), Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (835; 6.11%), and Journal of Neurotrauma (631; 4.61%). A statistically significant, high-level correlation was found between the number of publications about SCI and the countries' gross domestic product and gross domestic product per capita (r = 0.711, P < 0.001; r = 0.699, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: This study provides a systematic analysis of SCI and could be a beneficial guide for clinicians and scientists.

Controversies in diagnosis: contemporary debates in the diagnostic safety literature.

Since the 2015 publication of the National Academy of Medicine's (NAM) Improving Diagnosis in Health Care (Improving Diagnosis in Health Care. In: Balogh EP, Miller BT, Ball JR, editors. Improving Diagnosis in Health Care. Washington (DC): National Academies Press, 2015.), literature in diagnostic safety has grown rapidly. This update was presented at the annual international meeting of the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine (SIDM). We focused our literature search on articles published between 2016 and 2018 using keywords in Pubmed and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)'s Patient Safety Network's running bibliography of diagnostic error literature (Diagnostic Errors Patient Safety Network: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; Available from: https://psnet.ahrq.gov/search?topic=Diagnostic-Errors&f_topicIDs=407). Three key topics emerged from our review of recent abstracts in diagnostic safety. First, definitions of diagnostic error and related concepts are evolving since the NAM's report. Second, medical educators are grappling with new approaches to teaching clinical reasoning and diagnosis. Finally, the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to advance diagnostic excellence is coming to fruition. Here we present contemporary debates around these three topics in a pro/con format.

Increased average number of medical publications per interviewee from 2009 to 2018: a study of 100 interviewees to an academic gastroenterology fellowship program.

BACKGROUND: Gastroenterology fellowship candidates may strive to improve their qualifications for this extremely competitive fellowship. OBJECTIVE: To analyze whether extreme competitiveness of gastroenterology fellowship positions has affected fellowship interview selection by statistically analyzing 13 parameters of interviewees to identify statistically significant time changes during last 10 years. METHODS: Retrospective time-trend-analyses (performed 2018) on thirteen prospectively-obtained-parameters of 47 interviewees (2009-2011) vs. 53 interviewees (2016-2018) for gastroenterology fellowship. SETTING: William-Beaumont-Hospital, Royal-Oak: academic fully-accredited gastroenterology fellowship, teaching hospital of Oakland-University-William-Beaumont-School-of-Medicine, tertiary-care hospital, GI fellowship since 1973. RESULTS: Statistically significant increases occurred from 2009 to 2011 vs. 2016-2018 in number of publications, including mean number of: abstracts (1.69 ± 0.37 vs. 7.54 ± 1.16, p < 0.0001); peer-reviewed articles (1.48 ± 0.30 vs. 6.13 ± 1.29, p < 0.0001); and total publications (3.17 ± 0.48 vs. 12.76 ± 1.99, p < 0.0001). Increased publications were associated with graduating from foreign medical schools (correlation coefficient = 0.26, p = .03), and were, surprisingly, correlated with lower letters-of-recommendation-scores (Kruskal-Wallis-statistic = 5.82, p = .002). USMLE-Step-1 scores significantly increased from 2009 to 2011 to 2016-2018 (235 ± 14.1 vs. 244.9 ± 13.5, p = 0.001) (previously reported finding). Nine other parameters did not significantly change with time. CONCLUSIONS: Current report of >four-fold-increase in publications by gastroenterology fellowship interviewees at one academic-medical-center is novel. Increased focus on scholarship by applicants may be explained by their having only three parameters to improve their credentials during residency: publications, letters-of-recommendation, and honors awarded during residency (other parameters determined before residency and immutable). Current findings may benefit medical residents/medical-residency-program-directors by focusing more on publications for applications. Association between research productivity and medical promotions likely strongly motivates medical research of residents and may motivate academic faculty. Increased exposure to research/publications may improve the clinical acumen of GI fellowship applicants by enhancing their skills in critically reading the medical literature.

Choropleth map legend design for visualizing the most influential areas in article citation disparities: A bibliometric study.

BACKGROUND: Disparities in health outcomes across countries/areas are a central concern in public health and epidemiology. However, few authors have discussed legends that can be complemental to choropleth maps (CMs) and merely linked differences in outcomes to other factors like density in areas. Thus, whether health outcome rates on CMs showing the geographical distribution can be applied to publication citations in bibliometric analyses requires further study. The legends for visualizing the most influential areas in article citation disparities should have sophisticated designs. This paper illustrates the use of cumulative frequency (CF) map legends along with Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients (GC) to characterize the disparity of article citations in areas on CMs, based on the quantile classification method for classes. METHODS: By searching the PubMed database (pubmed.com), we used the keyword "Medicine" [journal] and downloaded 7042 articles published from 1945 to 2016. A total number of 41,628 articles were cited in Pubmed Central (PMC). The publication outputs based on the author's x-index were applied to plot CM about research contributions. The approach uses two methods (i.e., quantiles and equal total values for each class) with CF legends, in order to highlight the difference in x-indices across geographical areas on CMs. GC was applied to observe the x-index disparities in areas. Microsoft Excel Visual Basic for Application (VBA) was used for creating the CMs. RESULTS: Results showed that the most productive and cited countries in Medicine (Baltimore) were China and the US. The most-cited states and cities were Maryland (the US) and Beijing (China). Taiwan (x-index = 24.38) ranked behind Maryland (25.97), but ahead of Beijing (16.9). China earned lower disparity (0.42) than the US (0.49) and the rest of the world (0.53) when the GCs were applied. CONCLUSION: CF legends, particularly using the quantile classification for classes, can be useful to complement CMs. They also contain more information than those in standard CM legends that are commonly used with other classification methods. The steps of creating CM legends are described and introduced. Bibliometric analysts on CM can be replicated in the future.

Current applications of precision medicine: a bibliometric analysis.

A bibliometric analysis was conducted to describe trends in the publication of precision medicine literature over time. Searches identified 5552 articles with exponential growth from 2012 to 2018. Most were published in medical specialty journals, particularly oncology. Precision medicine definitions focused on tailored/individualized/personalized treatments and genetics/biology. Little attention was given to social and environmental determinants of health and health disparities. To fulfill the promise of precision medicine to positively impact broad populations, work is needed to develop the science of precision medicine for addressing health disparities and social and environmental determinants of health. While some precision medicine definitions include all factors that contribute to individual differences in health (e.g., genes, environments and lifestyles), future empirical work that includes and integrates all three areas is also required.

Trends in women's authorship in pharmacy literature.

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this evaluation was to determine whether the percentage of women as first authors in pharmacy journals has continued to increase over the past decade. METHODS: Key pharmacy practice journals were identified from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Core List of Journals for Pharmacy Education. Articles were analyzed from January 2007 through December 2017. The outcome of interest was the proportion of articles having feminine names as the first author. Femininity was determined for first authors by matching the first name to data from the U.S. Social Security Administration or genderize.io. The Cochran-Armitage trend test was used to determine differences in proportion of women as first authors over time. RESULTS: The listed first authors over the past decade were 52.7% female for all studied journals from 2007 through 2017. All but 1 journal demonstrated a significant increase in the proportion of female first authors over the time period studied. Subanalyses of journals (1) containing more than 90% gender-identifiable articles, (2) focused predominantly on contemporary drug therapy or pharmacy practice and not typically including pharmaceutical- or pharmacokinetics-related topics, and (3) that did not focus predominantly on contemporary therapy or practice and included pharmaceutical- or pharmacokinetics-related topics were each significant. CONCLUSION: Female first authorship in pharmacy practice journals appears to have increased in the past decade but may potentially be reaching a plateau. The proportion of female first authorship is close to reaching that of women in the U.S. pharmacy workforce when compared over the same time period.

A thorough analysis of diabetes research in China from 1995 to 2015: current scenario and future scope.

The prevalence of diabetes has increased dramatically over the past three decades, and currently, China has the largest number of diabetics worldwide; this number continues to grow and puts ongoing strains on the medical resources. In this review, we reviewed the diabetes research conducted in China from 1995 to 2015 with the aim of providing new insights regarding the current status and future perspectives for researchers, diabetes health providers, and respective policy-makers. Remarkable progress has been made in diabetes research in China during the past two decades in terms of both the quantity and publication influence. The progress, however, struggles to adequately manage diabetes in China. Here we addressed opportunities to strengthen researches, including new drug development, high quality studies on health economics, and healthcare quality improvement studies. As the expected wave of diabetic complications is upcoming and overwhelming, we therefore recommend that immediate improvements are required to implement the researches regarding their prevention and treatment.

Publications as predictors of racial and ethnic differences in NIH research awards.

This research expands efforts to understand differences in NIH funding associated with the self-identified race and ethnicity of applicants. We collected data from 2,397 NIH Biographical Sketches submitted between FY 2003 and 2006 as part of new NIH R01 Type 1 applications to obtain detailed information on the applicants' training and scholarly activities, including publications. Using these data, we examined the association between an NIH R01 applicant's race or ethnicity and the probability of receiving an R01 award. The applicant's publication history as reported in the NIH biographical sketch and the associated bibliometrics narrowed the black/white funding gap for new and experienced investigators in explanatory models. We found that black applicants reported fewer papers on their Biosketches, had fewer citations, and those that were reported appeared in journals with lower impact factors. Incorporating these measures in our models explained a substantial portion of the black/white funding gap. Although these predictors influence the funding gap, they do not fully address race/ethnicity differences in receiving a priority score.

Science Without Publication Paywalls: cOAlition S for the Realisation of Full and Immediate Open Access.

In this Perspective, a group of national funders, joined by the European Commission and the European Research Council, announce plans to make Open Access publishing mandatory for recipients of their agencies' research funding.