Bibliometric Analysis of Mexican Publications on Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery From 1949 to 2021

Abstract

BackgroundStereotactic and functional neurosurgery (SFN) is a rapidly evolving field and some emerging countries, especially Mexico, have made significant contributions to this discipline. A bibliometric analysis has never been performed in Latin America, and this would be particularly important to show the areas that remain poorly studied, and design research strategies for the future.MethodsScopus was queried using keywords pertaining to functional neurosurgery, restricting the affiliation country to Mexico, and considering documents published after 1949. Added to the initial search, a complementary literature exploration by author, considering the publications of the most productive neurosurgeons, was performed. A descriptive statistical analysis was carried out.ResultsFrom 5,109 articles, only 371 were eligible. Scientific production has gradually increased with time. Epilepsy (31%) and movement disorders (27.4%) were the most studied neurological conditions, whereas the other 41.6% corresponded to pain, behavior disorders, spinal cord injuries, neuromodulation, stereotactic biopsies, and SFN history. Level of evidence was predominantly level V (59.1%). Publication output is highly skewed to Mexico City, which represents 78.4% of national production. Relative to factors associated with impact of research, publications in English had more citations (28.5 mean citations per paper), and journals with an impact factor greater than one had more than 10 mean citations per paper.ConclusionsMexico has experienced an increase in the productivity of SFN literature, addressing the most prevalent issues in the country (epilepsy and motor disorders). However, it is necessary to report studies with a higher level of evidence, as well as to decentralize the research collaborating with national institutions outside Mexico City. On the other hand, it is imperative to promote scientific production in English and in high-impact indexed journals to increase the visibility of our production. We would like to call upon our colleagues in other countries to reproduce our methodology, in order to determine the factors associated with the impact and productivity on SFN research.

Bibliometric Analysis: Six Decades of Scientific Production from a Single Nationwide Institution: Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales De Los Trabajadores Del Estado (ISSSTE) from Mexico

“…Prior to our publication, the interest of the scientific community on this topic was so low that in the last 70 years we could only find 5 papers in PubMed with "Mexican publications" or "publications Mexico" in their title (20): one dates back to the 50's (21), two are from the 70's (22,23), and the last two were written in the 90's (24,25).…”

“…Our research was performed in Scopus, a database which was used in our previous bibliometric studies on Latin American research (19), COVID-19 pandemic (20)(21)(22), epilepsy (23,24), dementias (25), brain tumors (26), neurosurgery (27) and neurocysticercosis (28). We chose to use this repository is it is a well-known complete, varied, interdisciplinary and neutral source which delivers abstract and citations with a significant overview of the world's research output in the field of medicine and other related fields.…”

“…On the other hand, to depict what Mexican researchers have done, how they did it and the impact they had, we extracted the following bibliometric indicators: number of papers, number of citations, mean citations per paper and the L0 index. L0 index is a bibliometric parameter which has been proposed by Lee (2022), which is obtained by calculating the percentage of articles not cited over the total number of published articles, it is precisely the percentage of non-quoted papers (20). As in any bibliometric analysis, we also tracked.…”

Bibliometric Analysis: Six Decades of Scientific Production from a Nationwide Institution: Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE) from Mexico

“…Mexico ranked 68th. The ISSSTE covers about 10% of the Mexican population (around 13.7 million) [ 4 , 5 ]. Its mission is to “contribute to improving the levels of wellness of the workers of the State and all their beneficiaries, by providing efficient, effective, and good quality services [ 4 ].…”

“…The ISSSTE covers about 10% of the Mexican population (around 13.7 million) [ 4 , 5 ]. Its mission is to “contribute to improving the levels of wellness of the workers of the State and all their beneficiaries, by providing efficient, effective, and good quality services [ 4 ]. In medicine, scientific research is the cornerstone for improving patient care, finding innovative solutions, and making healthcare more affordable to our economic conditions.…”