The General Growth Tendency: A tool to improve publication trend reporting by removing record inflation bias and enabling quantitative trend analysis.
PLoS One
; 17(5): e0268433, 2022.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-35594252
ABSTRACT
The trend of the number of publications on a research field is often used to quantify research interest and effort, but this measure is biased by general publication record inflation. This study introduces a novel metric as an unbiased and quantitative tool for trend analysis and bibliometrics. The metric was used to reanalyze reported publication trends and perform in-depth trend analyses on patent groups and a broad range of field in the life-sciences. The analyses confirmed that inflation bias frequently results in the incorrect identification of field-specific increased growth. It was shown that the metric enables a more detailed, quantitative and robust trend analysis of peer reviewed publications and patents. Some examples of the metric's uses are quantifying inflation-corrected growth in research regarding microplastics (51% ± 10%) between 2012 and 2018 and detecting inflation-corrected growth increase for transcriptomics and metabolomics compared to genomics and proteomics (Tukey post hoc p<0.0001). The developed trend-analysis tool removes inflation bias from bibliometric trend analyses. The metric improves evidence-driven decision-making regarding research effort investment and funding allocation.
Texto completo:
1
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Plásticos
/
Bibliometria
Idioma:
En
Ano de publicação:
2022
Tipo de documento:
Article