Abstract
BackgroundThousands of research articles on neuroblastoma have been published over the past few decades; however, the heterogeneity and variable quality of scholarly data may challenge scientists or clinicians to survey all of the available information. Hence, holistic measurement and analyzation of neuroblastoma-related literature with the help of sophisticated mathematical tools could provide deep insights into global research performance and the collaborative architectonical structure within the neuroblastoma scientific community. In this scientometric study, we aim to determine the extent of the scientific output related to neuroblastoma research between 1980 and 2018.MethodsWe applied novel scientometric tools, including Bibliometrix R package, biblioshiny, VOSviewer, and CiteSpace IV for comprehensive science mapping analysis of extensive bibliographic metadata, which was retrieved from the Web of ScienceTM Core Collection database.ResultsWe demonstrate the enormous proliferation of neuroblastoma research during last the 38 years, including 12,435 documents published in 1828 academic journals by 36,908 authors from 86 different countries. These documents received a total of 316,017 citations with an average citation per document of 28.35 ± 7.7. We determine the proportion of highly cited and never cited papers, “occasional” and prolific authors and journals. Further, we show 12 (13.9%) of 86 countries were responsible for 80.4% of neuroblastoma-related research output.ConclusionsThese findings are crucial for researchers, clinicians, journal editors, and others working in neuroblastoma research to understand the strengths and potential gaps in the current literature and to plan future investments in data collection and science policy. This first scientometric study of global neuroblastoma research performance provides valuable insight into the scientific landscape, co-authorship network architecture, international collaboration, and interaction within the neuroblastoma community.
Highlights
Thousands of research articles on neuroblastoma have been published over the past few decades; the heterogeneity and variable quality of scholarly data may challenge scientists or clinicians to survey all of the available information
There was a consistent citation dynamic ranging from 29.5 citation per item (CPI) in 1980 to 30.8 CPI in 2010
After 2011, the CPI was 12.7, which was lower compared to the period 1980–2010, because most newly published articles had not been cited much at the time of data extraction for our study
Summary
Thousands of research articles on neuroblastoma have been published over the past few decades; the heterogeneity and variable quality of scholarly data may challenge scientists or clinicians to survey all of the available information. Holistic measurement and analyzation of neuroblastoma-related literature with the help of sophisticated mathematical tools could provide deep insights into global research performance and the collaborative architectonical structure within the neuroblastoma scientific community. In this scientometric study, we aim to determine the extent of the scientific output related to neuroblastoma research between 1980 and 2018. NB is aggressive, predominantly occurring in early childhood at a median age of 22 months and accounting for 15% of childhood cancer-related mortality. Mature variants (GNB or GN) occur in older children and tend to behave in a more benign fashion [6].
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