Digital health research: A scientometric assessment of global publications output during 2007–2016

Abstract

Aim and Scope: To study the scientometric assessment of global publications on Digital Health Research. Methods: The paper examines digital health research covering 6981 global publications sourced from Scopus database during 2007–2016. Results: Digital health research across 109 countries registered 8.03% growth and averaged to 7.33 citations per paper. The top 10 most productive countries individually contributed 2.75% to 33.82% share to global publications output and together they accounted for 79.30% share during the period. Their international collaborative publications varied from 3% to 14.49%. Medicine is the most studied subject with largest publication share in digital health research (53.55%), followed by computer science (33.85%), engineering (24.97%), health profession (13.24%), and others. The top 20 most productive organizations and authors together contributed 12.32% and 2.99% of global publications share, respectively, and 38.91% and 3.28% of global citations share, respectively. The top 20 journals contributed 12.32% share to the global output in journals during 2007–2016. Of the total digital health research, 46 (0.65%) were highly cited papers, citations to them ranged from 100 to 1104 per paper, with 257.76 citations per paper. Conclusion: A total of 415 authors from 242 organizations contributed 46 highly cited papers which appeared in 37 journals. Four papers appeared in CA Cancer Journal of Clinicians , three papers in Annals of Internal Medicine , two papers each in European Urology , Journal of American Medical Informatics Association , New England Journal of Medicine , Pediatrics and Stroke , and one paper each in 30 other journals.