PubMed-based quantitative analysis of biomedical publications in the SAARC countries: 1985-2009.

OBJECTIVE: To conduct a geographical analysis of biomedical publications from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries over the past 25 years (1985-2009) using the PubMed database. STUDY DESIGN: A qualitative study. PLACE AND DURATION OF STUDY: Web-based search during September 2010. METHODOLOGY: A data extraction program, developed by one of the authors (SFS), was used to extract the raw publication counts from the downloaded PubMed data. A search of PubMed was performed for all journals indexed by selecting the advanced search option and entering the country name in the 'affiliation' field. The publications were normalized by total population, adult illiteracy rate, gross domestic product (GDP), secondary school enrollment ratio and Internet usage rate. RESULTS: The number of PubMed-listed papers published by the SAARC countries over the last 25 years totalled 141,783, which is 1.1% of the total papers indexed by PubMed in the same period. India alone produced 90.5% of total publications generated by SAARC countries. The average number of papers published per year from 1985 to 2009 was 5671 and number of publication increased approximately 242-fold. Normalizing by the population (per million) and GDP (per billion), India (133, 27.6%) and Nepal (323, 37.3%) had the highest publications respectively. CONCLUSION: There was a marked imbalance among the SAARC countries in terms of biomedical research and publication. Because of huge population and the high disease burden, biomedical research and publication output should receive special attention to formulate health policies, re-orient medical education curricula, and alleviate diseases and poverty.

Physician participation in clinical research and trials: issues and approaches.

The rapid development of new drugs, therapies, and devices has created a dramatic increase in the number of clinical research studies that highlights the need for greater participation in research by physicians as well as patients. Furthermore, the potential of clinical research is unlikely to be reached without greater participation of physicians in research. Physicians face a variety of barriers with regard to participation in clinical research. These barriers are system-or organization-related as well as research-and physician-related. To encourage physician participation, appropriate organizational and operational infrastructures are needed in health care institutes to support research planning and management. All physicians should receive education and training in the fundamentals of research design and methodology, which need to be incorporated into undergraduate medical education and postgraduate training curricula and then reinforced through continuing medical education. Medical schools need to analyze current practices of teaching-learning and research, and reflect upon possible changes needed to develop a 'student-focused teaching-learning and research culture'. This article examines the barriers to and benefits of physician participation in clinical research as well as interventions needed to increase their participation, including the specific role of undergraduate medical education. The main challenge is the unwillingness of many physicians and patients to participate in clinical trials. Barriers to participation include lack of time, lack of resources, trial-specific issues, communication difficulties, conflicts between the role of clinician and scientist, inadequate research experience and training for physicians, lack of rewards and recognition for physicians, and sometimes a scientifically uninteresting research question, among others. Strategies to encourage physician participation in clinical research include financial and nonfinancial incentives, adequate training, research questions that are in line with physician interests and have clear potential to improve patient care, and regular feedback. Finally, encouraging research culture and fostering the development of inquiry and research-based learning among medical students is now a high priority in order to develop more and better clinician-researchers.

Mapping medical school curricula using the MeSH tree.

Mapping medical school curricula using the MeSH tree allows medical school administrators and medical educators to obtain a complete and detailed view of the curriculum. Detailed curriculum guides are indexed and then matched to MeSH terms displaying the location and frequency of a topic, concept, or keyword within the curriculum.

A quantitative analysis of medical publications from Arab countries.

OBJECTIVE: To perform geographical analysis of the number of biomedical publications produced in 20 Arab countries over a 15-year period from 1987 to 2001 and to compare publication rates normalized by country population, school enrollment, adult illiteracy, and gross domestic product (GDP). METHODS: This study was carried out at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAE University, Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates. A search of the Medline database for publications in which the first author of original articles is affiliated with an institution located in the Arab World was performed. Data collection, extraction, and validation was performed. RESULTS: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Egypt had the highest number of publications together accounting for 58.4% of the Arab World's publications. Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had the highest number when normalizing by population with 6.57/100,000 for Kuwait and 2.62/100,000 for UAE. Normalizing by the GDP indicator, Jordan had the highest number of publications with 11.2 per one billion average yearly GDP followed by Lebanon with 10.3 per one billion average yearly GDP. CONCLUSION: Normalizing publications by different indicators is important as results may vary when using different normalizing indicators or no normalization at all.