What can we learn from top-cited articles in inflammatory bowel disease? A bibliometric analysis and assessment of the level of evidence

Abstract

Background and objectivesDespite increasing number of publications in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), no bibliometric analysis has been conducted to evaluate the significance of highly cited articles. Our objectives were to identify the top-cited articles in IBD, assessing their characteristics and determining the quality of evidence provided by these articles.Design and outcome measuresIBD and related terms were used in searching the Web of Science to identify English language articles. The 50 top-cited articles were analysed by year, journal impact factor (JIF), authorship, females in authorship, institute, country and grants received. The level of evidence was determined using the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine guidelines.ResultsThe number of citations varied from 871 to 3555 with a total of 74 638, and a median 1339.50 (IQR=587). No correlations were found between the number of citations and number of years since publication (r=0.042, p=0.771), JIF (r=0.186, p=0.196), number of authors (r=0.061, p=0.674), females in authorship (r=0.064, p=0.661), number of institutes (r=0.076, p=0.602), number of countries (r=0.101, p=0.483) or number of grants (r=−0.015, p=0.915). The first authors were from the USA (n=24), the UK (n=6), Germany (n=5), France (n=5), Belgium (n=3) and Canada (n=3). The levels of evidence were 12 articles at level 1b, 9 articles at level 3a and 15 articles at level 3b and fewer were at other levels.ConclusionsResearch papers represented 66% of articles. The majority of items have reasonably high levels of evidence, which may have contributed to the higher number of citations. The study also shows a gender gap in authorship in this area.

The level of evidence, scientific impact and social impact of clinical studies in periodontology: A methodological study

“…The Oxford Centre for Evidence‐Based Medicine LOE is one of the most widely recognized rating classification systems, and the latest revision was proposed in 2011 (Howick et al, 2011). These guidelines have often been modified and adopted by other articles or journals (Amiri, Kanesalingam, Cro, & Casey, 2013; Azer & Azer, 2018; Judy et al., 2018; Marx, Wilson, & Swiontkowski, 2015). In general, results of high LOE studies are inherently more reliable and reproducible in their clinical applicability (Kay et al., 2017).…”

Trends and hotspots of family nursing research based on Web of Science: A bibliometric analysis

“…By analyzing the journal distribution of research literature, we can grasp the major academic journals in this field and keep track of the latest academic information in this field, and then improve research efficiency (Azer & Azer, 2018). The result of journal analysis shows that (Table 3) the research results are published mainly in <Journal Of Family Nursing> (126 articles) and <Journal Of Clinical Nursing> (94 articles), and their cited frequencies are higher than others (Table 3).…”

Global Research Trends in Tendon Stem Cells from 1991 to 2020: A Bibliometric and Visualized Study

“…The H -index and total number of citations represent the academic influence and publication quality of a country [ 39 , 40 ]. While the United States was the leading contributive country in this field, China was regarded as a vital role which made abundant contribution to this field in terms of total number of publications, total citation frequency, and H -index.…”