A bibliometric analysis of scientific production in cancer molecular epidemiology

Autor: Paul A. Schulte, Donatella Ugolini, Frederica P. Perera, Stefano Bonassi, Riccardo Puntoni
Rok vydání: 2007
Předmět:
Zdroj: Carcinogenesis. 28:1774-1779
ISSN: 1460-2180
0143-3334
DOI: 10.1093/carcin/bgm129
Popis: Objectives: The main purpose of this research was to compare thescientificproductioninthefieldofcancer molecularepidemiologyamong countries and to evaluate the publication trend between1995 and 2004. Methods: A bibliometric study was carried outsearching the PubMed database with a combined search strategybased on the keywords listed in the medical subject headings anda free text search. Only articles from a representative subset of92journals—accountingfor80%ofpapersidentified—wereselectedfor the analysis, and the resulting 13 240 abstracts were manuallychecked according to a list of basic inclusion criteria. The studyevaluatedthenumberofpublicationsandtheimpactfactor(meanand sum), absolute and normalized by country population andgross domestic product. Results: A total of 3842 citations werefinally selected for the analysis. Thirty-seven percent came fromthe European Union (UK, Germany, Italy, France and Swedenranking at the top), 31.6% from USA and 9.7% from Japan.The highest mean impact factor was reported for Canada (6.3),USA (5.9),Finland (5.8)andUK (5.2).Finland,Sweden andIsraelhad the best ratio between scientific production and availableresources. ‘Genetic polymorphism, glutathione transferase,breast neoplasm, risk factors, case–control studies and polymer-ase chain reaction’ were the most used keywords in each of thesubgroups evaluated, although inclusion criteria may have privi-leged studies dealing with exogenous carcinogens. Conclusion:Cancer molecular epidemiology is an expanding area attractinganincreasinginterest.Theidentificationofanoperativedefinitionisanecessaryconditiontogivetothisdisciplineauniquescientificidentity.IntroductionScientists have long recognized the intrinsic limitations of the tradi-tional epidemiological design to discern the causal link between riskfactors and disease occurrence in this evolving society. The pressingneed of developing new tools for etiologic research was the drivingforce that in 1982 moved Perera and Weinstein to propose an enhance-ment of the epidemiological approach through ‘the incorporation oflaboratory analytical techniques to elucidate the biochemical or mo-lecular basis of disease etiology’ (1). Since then, many studies havebeen conducted to investigate the distribution of diseases in humanpopulations and their determinants, incorporating molecular biologytechniques into the epidemiologic design (2–4).In the last decades, molecular epidemiology has gained a well-established position in the field of cancer research, with a numberof dedicated researchers and institutions all over the world. This in-creased popularity has resulted in a growing scientific production,whose impact in the field is still to be fully quantified. Bibliometricstudies are systematically conducted to evaluate the amount and theevolution of the scientific production among countries in major bio-medical fields (5–12), but are particularly useful for novel disciplines,whose impact on the larger field of biomedical research has yet to befully evaluated.Bibliometry surveys the scientific production of a scientist, a re-search unit, an institution or a country by taking into consideration thehistorical development of a discipline or by quantifying its role in thedomain of science, or prospectively, identifying research fronts. Toperform this evaluation, citation analysis is currently used.Citation analysis is defined as the number of times an article is citedas a reference in other articles and is based on the general assumptionthat the number of citations reflects an article’s influence and notorietyand, hence, its quality. The databases most commonly used are thoseproduced by the Thomson Scientific (formerly known as ThomsonInstitute for Scientific Information), which evaluates the papers pub-lished in .7500 peer-reviewed journals in the sciences and socialsciences, and each year publishes an index (Journal Citation Reports)based on cited articles (13).The main purpose of this paper is to provide a report on the scien-tific production in the field of cancer molecular epidemiologyamong countries. To this aim, the geographical distribution and thetemporal trend of papers published between 1995 and 2004 have beeninvestigated.Basic information about published papers includes the list of thosejournals most often chosen by researchers in the field and furtherconsideration was given to the impact factor (IF) of the journals wherethe papers were published. This parameter gives further informationabout the quality of the published material, especially if evaluated inthe context of major socioeconomic variables, i.e. the source countrypopulation and its gross domestic product (GDP).Finally, the evaluation of most frequently used keywords in cancermolecular epidemiology papers provided useful hints about the iden-tification of main research trends and helped to interpret the perspec-tive of evolution of this field.Methods
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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