Hepatitis B: global scientific development from a critical point of view

Abstract

Hepatitis B is the tenth leading cause of death worldwide. Countries with high endemicity, such as China and Taiwan show high scientific productivity in this field and dominate the top ten list of the most productive authors worldwide, providing four of them. This is remarkable, as the USA and Europe usually maintain leading positions, not only regarding country-specific scientific productivity, but also top ten ranking of most productive and most cited authors in other important medical sectors. So far, a scientometric analysis of the topic 'hepatitis B' has not been generated despite an increased need for it in times of modified evaluation criteria for academic personnel and a subsequent tendency to co-authorship and author self-citation. In this study, scientometric methods and large-scale data analysis were used to evaluate quality and quantity of scientific research dealing with the topic 'hepatitis B' and to contribute to distinguish relevant research output. Data were gained from Pubmed and ISI-Web. In the time span of 1971-2011, 49 166 items were published by 250 countries, of which the USA have been the most productive supplier with 28% of all publications, followed in considerable distance by Germany, China, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, Italy and Taiwan, respectively. The USA have established their position as centre of international cooperation. Their cooperation with China proves to be the most productive one. The most prolific journals in the field of hepatitis b were 'Hepatology', the 'Journal of Hepatology' and the 'Journal of Medical Virology'. h-index, citation rate and impact factor, commonly used for assessment of scientific quality, were determined and discussed critically with regard to distortion by bias of self-citation and co-authorship.

Density equalizing mapping of the global tuberculosis research architecture

“…Similar analyses have been carried out on yellow fever [20], influenza [21] and hepatitis B [22]. Only a number of 5053 publications on yellow fever could be identified [20] in the WoS, whereat the USA have had also the highest publication rate with 42% (751 publications), followed by Brazil with 203 publication, after all [20].…”

“…Again, the USA accounted for the highest number of publications (19,194), followed by the UK (4614) and it has also been confirmed as main part of the international network too, together with Canada and Japan [21]. As another major infectious disease is hepatitis B [22] has been analyzed regarding the research output, but only in a relatively short time interval of 40 years from 1971 to 2011 so far. Interestingly, despite the lesser time span, as for this extreme high number of 49,166 items were published by 250 countries.…”

Pulmonary Hypertension: Scientometric Analysis and Density-Equalizing Mapping

“…The top three ranking of US, UK, Germany in t1 is not a unique pattern of PH research [53, 54]. It is also visible in numerous other respiratory fields [47] as well as in cardiologic fields [55, 56], in infectious diseases [46, 57], or public health issues [58, 59]. Until 2007 (t1) Japan and France followed the first three countries, whereas in t2 France and China occupied the next places, that means that China replaced Japan in ranking of the top five.…”

Snakebite Envenoming – A Combined Density Equalizing Mapping and Scientometric Analysis of the Publication History

“…In striking contrast to other scientometric studies that addresses diseases such as gout [59], silicosis [31], or infectious diseases including influenza [35], or hepatitis B [60], the global ranking of snakebite research activity is different to the usual picture with the USA being followed by the UK, Germany or Japan: This usual pattern has also been found in a study analyzing over 5.5 million publications on the global publication activity within the following 21 organ systems: Brain, heart, artery, vein, lung, muscle, eye, nose, ear, throat, neck, skin, breast, stomach, intestine, pancreas, kidney, genital, hormone, arm, feet. Here, an almost uniform pattern was present for every single organ.…”