Past and future trends in cancer and biomedical research: a comparison between Egypt and the World using PubMed-indexed publications

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: PubMed is a free web literature search service that contains almost 21 millions of abstracts and publications with almost 5 million user queries daily. The purposes of the study were to compare trends in PubMed-indexed cancer and biomedical publications from Egypt to that of the world and to predict future publication volumes. METHODS: The PubMed was searched for the biomedical publications between 1991 and 2010 (publications dates). Affiliation was then limited to Egypt. Further limitation was applied to cancer, human and animal publications. Poisson regression model was used for prediction of future number of publications between 2011 and 2020. RESULTS: Cancer publications contributed 23% to biomedical publications both for Egypt and the world. Egyptian biomedical and cancer publications contributed about 0.13% to their world counterparts. This contribution was more than doubled over the study period. Egyptian and world's publications increased from year to year with rapid rise starting the year 2003. Egyptian as well as world's human cancer publications showed the highest increases. Egyptian publications had some peculiarities; they showed some drop at the years 1994 and 2002 and apart from the decline in the animal: human ratio with time, all Egyptian publications in the period 1991-2000 were significantly more than those in 2001-2010 (P<0.05 for all). By 2020, Egyptian biomedical and cancer publications will increase by 158.7% and 280% relative to 2010 to constitute 0.34% and 0.17% of total PubMed publications, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The Egyptian contribution to world's biomedical and cancer publications needs significant improvements through research strategic planning, setting national research priorities, adequate funding and researchers' training.     

中国灵长类文献纵览

把1870-2001年来自美国"现代灵长类文献题录数据库"、"维普中文数据库"及"中国灵长类研究文献题录"的资料按4个时期(I:1870-1949;Ⅱ:1950-1965;Ⅲ:1966-1977;Ⅳ:1978-2001)分类整理.此外,使用了"科学引文数据库(扩展版)".结果如下:(1)1870-2001年共有20 52篇文献,2个文献数量高峰分别出现于1950-1965和1978-2001年;科研部门所发表的论文占54.2%,并随时间而增加;而国外部门则随之减少.(2)2 052篇文献中,超过9%的文献为SCI所收录,其中1966-1977年被SCI收录的文献百分比最高;在全部被SCI收录的文献中又以科研部门的占优势(59.1%);但国外部门则以其30.1%的文献被SCI收录而领先.(3)统计了灵长类研究9个领域文献百分比及其变化,其中1978-2001间生态学和行为、神经生物学、繁殖和饲养快速发展;化石灵长类、形态学和解剖学减少;分类及分布、细胞及分子进化显得不甚突出;在第Ⅱ时期和第Ⅳ时期疾病防治研究相当多;保护生物学得到越来越多的关注.第Ⅳ时期作者数量最多,但每个作者的文献平均数却不如第Ⅰ时期.一般地说,在SCI收录的作者中以中国作者居多,但在第I时期唯一被SCI收录的作者则是一名外国学者;在第Ⅲ时期外国作者占被收录作者数的60%.     

Gender-Heterogeneous Working Groups Produce Higher Quality Science

Here we present the first empirical evidence to support the hypothesis that a gender-heterogeneous problem-solving team generally produced journal articles perceived to be higher quality by peers than a team comprised of highly-performing individuals of the same gender. Although women were historically underrepresented as principal investigators of working groups, their frequency as PIs at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis is now comparable to the national frequencies in biology and they are now equally qualified, in terms of their impact on the accumulation of ecological knowledge (as measured by the h-index). While women continue to be underrepresented as working group participants, peer-reviewed publications with gender-heterogeneous authorship teams received 34% more citations than publications produced by gender-uniform authorship teams. This suggests that peers citing these publications perceive publications that also happen to have gender-heterogeneous authorship teams as higher quality than publications with gender uniform authorship teams. Promoting diversity not only promotes representation and fairness but may lead to higher quality science.     

The how and why of societal publications for citizen science projects and scientists

In the scientific community, the importance of communication to society is often underestimated. Scientists and scientific organisations often lack the skills to organise such communication effectively. The Dutch citizen science phenology network Nature’s Calendar has been successful in communicating to the general public via numerous newspaper articles, television appearances, presentations, websites and social media. We refer to these publications as societal publications. Due to active communication to mass media, we frequently reach millions of people. This communication helped us to involve thousands of volunteers in recording the timing of phenological events like the start of flowering, leaf unfolding and bird migration, but also several health-related events like hay fever symptoms and tick bites. In this paper, we analyse and present our experiences with the Nature’s Calendar project regarding societal publications. Based on this analysis, we explain the importance of societal publications for citizen science projects and scientists in general, and we show how scientists can increase the newsworthiness of scientific information and what factors and activities can increase the chances of media paying attention to this news. We show that societal publications help phenological networks by facilitating the recruitment, retention and instruction of observers. Furthermore, they stimulate the generation of new ideas and partners that lead to an increase in knowledge, awareness and behavioural change of the general public or specific stakeholders. They make projects, and scientists involved, better known to the public and increase their credibility and authority. Societal publications can catalyse the production of new publications, thereby enforcing the previous mentioned points.     

Comparison of Primatological Literature in Latin American, European and African Countries

I compare the primatological literature in 4 Latin American (Brazil, Perú, Mexico and Argentina) 2 European (Great Britain and France) and one African (Kenya) countries with regard to: (1) total number of publications; (2) productivity of scientists; (3) quality of the publications; and (4) the range of subjects studied. Data are from Current Primate References (CPR; 1985–1994). Publications included in the sample show an address from the countries considered. The results showed that GB and France had a far larger number of publications than the other countries. They have respectively >7 and 4 times more authors than Brazil, the country with the highest number of authors among Latin American and African countries. But the mean number of publications per author shows little difference among the 7 countries. The quality of publications as measured by the percentage indexed by ISI shows that, GB and France fare much better than the Latin American countries. Kenya did not follow the pattern of the other underdeveloped countries and showed a high percentage of indexed publications. Not all subjects reviewed in CPR were studied by scientists from the 7 countries. GB and France presented the widest range of subjects. Scientists in countries with greater primate diversity concentrated their publications in behavior, ecology and conservation, colony management and general primatology with the exception of Kenya. These results suggest that scientific production in Latin American countries can be increased by increasing the number of scientists, either through educational programs or via incentives for the career. However, more specific action is needed to improve the quality of publications and the range of subjects studied.     

Evaluating research and impact: a bibliometric analysis of research by the NIH/NIAID HIV/AIDS clinical trials networks

Evaluative bibliometrics uses advanced techniques to assess the impact of scholarly work in the context of other scientific work and usually compares the relative scientific contributions of research groups or institutions. Using publications from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) HIV/AIDS extramural clinical trials networks, we assessed the presence, performance, and impact of papers published in 2006-2008. Through this approach, we sought to expand traditional bibliometric analyses beyond citation counts to include normative comparisons across journals and fields, visualization of co-authorship across the networks, and assess the inclusion of publications in reviews and syntheses. Specifically, we examined the research output of the networks in terms of the a) presence of papers in the scientific journal hierarchy ranked on the basis of journal influence measures, b) performance of publications on traditional bibliometric measures, and c) impact of publications in comparisons with similar publications worldwide, adjusted for journals and fields. We also examined collaboration and interdisciplinarity across the initiative, through network analysis and modeling of co-authorship patterns. Finally, we explored the uptake of network produced publications in research reviews and syntheses. Overall, the results suggest the networks are producing highly recognized work, engaging in extensive interdisciplinary collaborations, and having an impact across several areas of HIV-related science. The strengths and limitations of the approach for evaluation and monitoring research initiatives are discussed.     

基于社会网络分析和共词分析的制药技术领域研究

目的:深入研究制药技术领域的发展态势。方法:本研究以Pub Med数据库中收录的制药技术领域研究论文为研究对象,采用社会网络分析、共词分析等定量方法,结合药学专业知识的定性分析,从论文数量年度分布、国家/地区分布及合作网络、研究主题等多个角度开展研究。结果:研究发现:第一,全球制药技术领域共有研究论文95381篇,近几年正处于快速发展阶段;第二,论文发表集中在美国、中国和日本等国家;第三,在定量分析的基础上,结合药学专业知识,共得到15个研究主题,包括点击化学、晶型药物、纳米微球药物等。结论:美国在制药技术领域处于主导地位,中国发文量已经具备一定优势,但发文量和国际影响力与美国相比还是存在较大差距;通过对制药技术领域研究主题的深入分析可以全面把握制药技术领域的研究现状和发展态势。     

Recent views on river pollution and diatoms

The first studies of diatoms and river pollution were carried out 60 years ago, and the suitability of these micro-algae as bioassessment indicators for monitoring river quality was quickly demonstrated. The objective of this review is to describe the state of the art of the study of diatoms and river pollution between 1999 and 2009. The objective was to group the publications homogeneously according to subject and to indicate which subjects never overlap. To this end a lexical analysis was conducted on the abstract structure of these publications and seven K-means clusters were defined. Most of the items in this area were found to have been published in Hydrobiologia. One group (group 6) comprises publications about a discipline (ecotoxicology); several others group publications on the basis of the same approaches, for example species (group 3), basin (group 7), or spatial approaches (group 2). Other publications are brought together because the studies used a common method of using data, namely predictive models (group 1) or biotic indices (group 4). One group of publications was of studies performed in the same area—South Africa (group 5). Several remarks can be made. First, ecotoxicological studies are mostly experimental and restricted to small study areas. To answer society’s demand for new assessment tools for micropollutant assessment, the next step would be to have more in-situ tests on larger spatial scales. Second, diatom biomonitoring uses the word “species” extensively, because this is the basis for establishing the lists of flora which are used extensively in such subject areas. Species is closely related to taxonomy; nevertheless this discipline is very rarely addressed in the papers. Third, phylogeny is never addressed in the publications. This is significant because phylogenetic studies for freshwater macroinvertebrates enable appropriate definition of taxonomic aggregations that can be used as accurate indicators of particular environmental stressors.     

Recent advances in bone marrow biopsy pathology

The second quarter of 2009 saw steady advances in bone marrow biopsy (BMB) pathology. The following publications are a personal selection of the highlights. Quality issues in diagnostic immunohistochemistry for BMB have largely been ignored in external quality assurance programmes, and this issue is highlighted. In other areas, publications reflecting advances in flow cytometry and aspirate morphology are discussed where translation to the BMB is possible. Classifications undergo constant change, and several publications address the redefinition of the cut off points between malignancy, benign, and normal. Lastly, current scientific research is presented where it is relevant to the understanding of BMB pathobiology.     

Trends in publications regarding evidence-practice gaps: A literature review

Background

Well-designed trials of strategies to improve adherence to clinical practice guidelines are needed to close persistent evidence-practice gaps. We studied how the number of these trials is changing with time, and to what extent physicians are participating in such trials.

Methods

This is a literature-based study of trends in evidence-practice gap publications over 10 years and participation of clinicians in intervention trials to narrow evidence-practice gaps. We chose nine evidence-based guidelines and identified relevant publications in the PubMed database from January 1998 to December 2007. We coded these publications by study type (intervention versus non-intervention studies). We further subdivided intervention studies into those for clinicians and those for patients. Data were analyzed to determine if observed trends were statistically significant.

Results

We identified 1,151 publications that discussed evidence-practice gaps in nine topic areas. There were 169 intervention studies that were designed to improve adherence to well-established clinical guidelines, averaging 1.9 studies per year per topic area. Twenty-eight publications (34%; 95% CI: 24% - 45%) reported interventions intended for clinicians or health systems that met Effective Practice and Organization of Care (EPOC) criteria for adequate design. The median consent rate of physicians asked to participate in these well-designed studies was 60% (95% CI, 25% to 69%).

Conclusions

We evaluated research publications for nine evidence-practice gaps, and identified small numbers of well-designed intervention trials and low rates of physician participation in these trials.     

Is ‘Self-Medication’ a Useful Term to Retrieve Related Publications in the Literature? A Systematic Exploration of Related Terms

BackgroundSelf-Medication (SM), i.e. using medications to treat oneself, is a major concern for health researchers and policy makers. The terms “self medication” or “self-medication” (SM terms) have been used to explain various concepts while several terms have also been employed to define this practice. Hence, retrieving relevant publications would require exhaustive literature screening. So, we assessed the current situation of SM terms in the literature to improve the relevancy of search outcomes.MethodsIn this Systematic exploration, SM terms were searched in the 6 following databases and publisher’s portals till April 2012: Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Google scholar, ScienceDirect, and Wiley. A simple search query was used to include only publications with SM terms. We used Relative-Risk (RR) to estimate the probability of SM terms use in related compared to unrelated publications. Sensitivity and specificity of SM terms as keywords in search query were also calculated. Relevant terms to SM practice were extracted and their Likelihood Ratio positive and negative (LR+/-) were calculated to assess their effect on the probability of search outcomes relevancy in addition to previous search queries. We also evaluated the content of unrelated publications. All mentioned steps were performed in title (TI) and title or abstract (TIAB) of publications.Results1999 related and 1917 unrelated publications were found. SM terms RR was 4.5 in TI and 2.1 in TIAB. SM terms sensitivity and specificity respectively were 55.4% and 87.7% in TI and 84.0% and 59.5% in TIAB. “OTC” and “Over-The-Counter Medication”, with LR+ 16.78 and 16.30 respectively, provided the most conclusive increase in the probability of the relevancy of publications. The most common unrelated SM themes were self-medication hypothesis, drug abuse and Zoopharmacognosy.ConclusionsDue to relatively low specificity or sensitivity of SM terms, relevant terms should be employed in search queries and clear definitions of SM applications should be applied to improve the relevancy of publications.     

Complete Bibliography of Eugenie C. Scott

Bibliographic references for all works authored by Eugenie C. Scott are provided, including her contributions to the publications of the National Center for Science Education and to other sources. The publication history of the various NCSE publications is explained.     

Bibliometric analysis of recent sodium channel research

Although sodium channels have been a hot multidisciplinary focus for decades and most of nerve system drugs worked on alerting sodium channel function, the trends and future directions of sodium channel studies have not been comprehensive analyzed bibliometrically. Herein, we collected the scientific publications of sodium channels research and constructed a model to evaluate the current trend systematically.

Publications were selected from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database from 2013 to 2017. Microsoft Excel 2016, Prism 6, and CiteSpace V software were used to analyze publication outputs, journal sources, countries, territories, institutions, authors, and research areas. A total of 4,275 publications on sodium channel research were identified. PLoS ONE ranked top for publishing 170 papers. The United States of America had the largest number of publications (1,595), citation frequency (19,490), and H-index (53). S. G. Waxman (62 publications) and W. A. Catterall (585 citations) were the most productive authors and had the greatest co-citation counts. This is the first report that shows the trends and future development in sodium channel publications, and our study provides a clear profile for the contribution to this field by countries, authors, keywords, and institutions.     

A Survey of Overlooked Viral Infections in Biological Experiment Systems

It is commonly accepted that there are many unknown viruses on the planet. For the known viruses, do we know their prevalence, even in our experimental systems? Here we report a virus survey using recently published small (s)RNA sequencing datasets. The sRNA reads were assembled and contigs were screened for virus homologues against the NCBI nucleotide (nt) database using the BLASTn program. To our surprise, approximately 30% (28 out of 94) of publications had highly scored viral sequences in their datasets. Among them, only two publications reported virus infections. Though viral vectors were used in some of the publications, virus sequences without any identifiable source appeared in more than 20 publications. By determining the distributions of viral reads and the antiviral RNA interference (RNAi) pathways using the sRNA profiles, we showed evidence that many of the viruses identified were indeed infecting and generated host RNAi responses. As virus infections affect many aspects of host molecular biology and metabolism, the presence and impact of viruses needs to be actively investigated in experimental systems.     

The textual characteristics of traditional and Open Access scientific journals are similar

Background  

Recent years have seen an increased amount of natural language processing (NLP) work on full text biomedical journal publications. Much of this work is done with Open Access journal articles. Such work assumes that Open Access articles are representative of biomedical publications in general and that methods developed for analysis of Open Access full text publications will generalize to the biomedical literature as a whole. If this assumption is wrong, the cost to the community will be large, including not just wasted resources, but also flawed science. This paper examines that assumption.     

Lifetime list of publications by Hiroya Kawanabe

Hiroya Kawanabe produced more than 780 scientific papers, popular articles, governmental reports, chapters in books, edited or co-edited books, encyclopedia entries, and Japanese translations of books from 1952 until the compilation of this bibliography (Fall 1997). He was the sole or first author of 88% of these publications and shared authorship with 286 collaborators. Eighty-nine percent of his publications were in Japanese, others were in English, German, Chinese, Korean and Italian. His publications were devoted mainly to four topics: (1) ecology of freshwater fishes, especially the territorial behavior of ayu, Plecoglossus altivelis, and interspecific relationships and food segregation among fishes from 1956; (2) fish community ecology in Lake Tanganyika since 1979; (3) political articles on ecological research after 1991; and (4) museum activities after 1996. He also produced a number of newspaper articles (over 25% of total publications) addressing topics not only of science but literature, culture and philosophy. Kawanabe's articles in newspapers were produced mainly when he was the Director of the Center for Ecological Research of Kyoto University, and most of these articles concentrated on promoting the development of ecological research in Japan. The publications are arranged chronologically by year. The decision to add Japanese titles was based on the fact that their English translations, which follow in parentheses, are often too loose and imprecise. Unfortunately, our printers could not insert these titles in the Japanese characters so Roman transliterations had to be substituted.     

Jane goodall and the chimpanzees of gombe: An analysis of publications and their impact on teaching science

Five types of introductory university textbooks (N=37) were analyzed for references and citations pertaining to research on wild chimpanzees. Jane Goodall's publications were cited about three times as often as the publications from field sites other than Gombe and approximately five times more often than other Gombe researchers. Biological anthropology textbooks cited Goodall's work most often, followed by textbooks in general anthropology and cultural anthropology. Psychology and biology textbooks cited Goodall least often. Goodall's most comprehensive work, The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior (1986), was the most often cited publication about Gombe's apes, and tool-use was the most cited topic. The number of citations to wild chimpanzees tripled from publications in the 1960s to those in the 1980s, suggesting a growing recognition of primatology in the teaching of science.     

A view of clinical engineering from scientific publications

The aim of this paper was to characterize clinical engineering from the perspective of scientific publications. First of all, the most significant factors that influence the change in health systems are briefly exposed. Then, clinical engineering is defined and its main functions and evolution within the development of the health system is explained. Finally, the author describes the state of the field from the viewpoint of the scientific publications; an apparent lack of interest in the engineering community to publish scientific research was observed. This behavior can be seen in the clear declining tendency in the number of citations and the number of publications (in volume or quantity) in major scientific journals in the field. Finally, current challenges and future developments must be addressed to accomplish a better positioning of the specialty in the publishing world.     

Trends in HSPB5 research: a 36-year bibliometric analysis

HSPB5 (heat shock protein B5), also known as αB-crystallin, is one of the most widespread and populous of the ten human small heat shock proteins (sHsps). Over the past decades, extensive research has been conducted on HSPB5. However, few studies have statistically analyzed these publications. Herein, we conducted a bibliometric analysis to track the global research trend and current development status of HSPB5 research from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database between 1985 and 2020. Our results demonstrate that 1220 original articles cited 54,778 times in 391 scholarly journals were published. Visualization analyses reveal that the Journal of Biological Chemistry was the most influential journal with 85 articles. The USA dominated this field with 520 publications (42.62%), followed by Japan with 149 publications (12.21%), and Kato contributed the largest number of publications. Most related publications were published in journals focusing on biochemistry molecular biology, cell biology, neurosciences neurology, and ophthalmology. In addition, keyword co-occurrence analyses identify three predominant research topics: expression of HSPB5, chaperone studies for HSPB5, and pathological studies of HSPB5. This study provides valuable guidance for researchers and leads to collaborative opportunities between diverse research interests to be integrated for HSPB5 research.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12192-021-01220-6.