Cardiac Insufficiency: A Critical Analysis of the Current Publication Procedures Under Quantitative and Qualitative Aspects

Abstract

Cardiac insufficiency (CI) can be defined as a functional and/or structural cardiac disorder that most often results from either chronic hypertension and/or heart attack.1Rudolph W. Pathophysiologic and diagnostic aspects of heart failure.Herz. 1990; 15: 147-157PubMed Google Scholar, 2O'Rourke M.F. Arterial aging: Pathophysiological principles.Vasc Med. 2007; 12: 329-341Crossref PubMed Scopus (187) Google Scholar CI has become of increasing socioeconomic importance because of shifts in age distribution (ie, aging society). Regarding the numerous publications on CI, it is difficult for a scientist or clinician to survey all the available research and gauge scientific importance of specific items. Scientometrics is a relatively new method to help medical professionals evaluate research accomplishments and distributions. A total of 82,828 publications were found in the Web of Science database for the period from 1900 to 2007 after entering “cardiac insufficiency” and its synonyms (eg, “heart failure” and “insufficienta cordis”) in the search field (Fig 1A). It is possible to evaluate the most prolific authors and journals dealing with the topic by comparing quantitative (ie, number of published items) and qualitative factors like the H-index and impact factor. According to these parameters, “COHN, JN” and “PACKER, M” are the most productive authors (Fig 1B). Further analysis revealed that authors with relatively high H-indices combine a disproportionately high ratio of reviews, which generally have more citations than original articles. To evaluate the most prolific journal, two aspects are of particular interest: the number of published items (indicating that the topic is of major or minor interest to a journal) and the journal-specific impact factor (indicating the scientific impact of the journal). Circulation best encompasses these parameters, making it the most prolific journal (Fig 1C). The 82,828 entries originated from 137 countries, of which the United States, Germany, and the UK were the most productive countries, representing 54.5% of all published items (Fig 2A). International cooperation analysis showed that most of the cooperative efforts involved the United States. The cooperation between the United States and Canada (965), the United States and Germany (812), the United States and the UK (774), and the United States and Italy (773) were the most productive (Fig 2B). Furthermore, to evaluate the scientific impact of published items from different countries, the average citation rate per country was determined based on the principle that items with important scientific input usually have more citations than the less important ones. Argentina, South Africa, and Sweden had the highest average citation rates observed (Fig 2C). According to the number of published items and international cooperation, the average citation rate of these countries appeared to be disproportionately high. Further analysis revealed a tendency of a disproportionately high rate of self-citation in these countries. However, a similar tendency was revealed for most of the countries in our analysis. Thus, the average citation rate should be critically reconsidered as a measure of scientific impact, especially as the average citation rate factors into other parameters like the impact factor and H-index. The current scientometric analysis indicates that the current parameters measuring scientific impact and quantity are not objectively reliable. We recommend that efforts should be made to establish new parameters that limit coauthorship and exclude self-citations to obtain more sustainable results.