Countries’ Biomedical Publications and Attraction Scores. A PubMed-based assessment

Abstract

Studying publication volumes at the country level is key to understanding and improving a country's research system. PubMed is a public search engine of publications in all life sciences areas. Here, we show how this search engine can be used to assess the outputs of life science-related research by country. We have measured the numbers of publications during different time periods based on the country of affiliation of the first authors. Moreover, we have designed scores, which we have named Attraction Scores, to appraise the relative focus either toward particular types of studies, such as clinical trials or reviews, or toward specific research areas, such as public health and pharmacogenomics, or toward specific topics, for instance embryonic stem cells; we have also investigated a possible use of these Attraction Scores in connection with regulatory policies. We have weighed the statistics against general indicators such as country populations and gross domestic products (GDP). During the 5-year period 2008-2012, the United States was the country with the highest number of publications and Denmark the one with the highest number of publications . Among the 40 countries with the highest per capita GDPs, Israel had the highest publications-to-GDP ratio. Among the 20 countries with the most publications, Japan had the highest Attraction Score for induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells and Italy the highest proportion of review publications. More than 50% of publications in English were from countries in which English is not the primary language. We show an assorted and extensive collection of rankings and charts that will inform scholars and policymakers in studying and improving the research systems both at the national and international level.

Biomedical and health research geography in the Eastern Mediterranean Region

“…In the Islamic Republic of Iran, policies aimed at supporting scientific research resulted in a remarkable production of scientific publications and placed the country among the fastest growing countries in terms of scientific research, especially among the 20 countries with the most publications (9,63). In the present study, the Islamic Republic of Iran is demonstrating an exponential increase in terms of publication outputs in biomedical and health sciences for the period from 2004 to 2013 (Figure 1.b).…”

Countries’ Biomedical Publications and Attraction Scores

“…figshare: Biomedical publication and Attraction Score data based on PubMed searches, http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1246898 21 …”

Levelling the lingo playing field

“…In 2014, according to PubMed's language filter, 95.4% of life science publications retrieved by the search engine were written in English, in line with the trend of the last several decades . Today, among the 20 countries with the highest number of publications per year on PubMed, only France and China apparently publish less than 95% of their papers in English .…”

“…With an ever‐declining number of papers written in languages other than English, the idiom of Shakespeare is, today more than ever before, the international language of science . In 2014, according to PubMed's language filter, 95.4% of life science publications retrieved by the search engine were written in English, in line with the trend of the last several decades .…”

“…However, English is only natively spoken by around 5% of the world population and only about 20 countries use it as their primary language (http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size). Not surprisingly, in 2014, only 4 out of the 20 countries with highest number of life science publications have English as their primary language , and in the 5‐year period 2008–2012, nearly 54% of papers on PubMed were written in countries where English is not the primary idiom .…”