Gastroenterology and Hepatology Research Output in the 20th Century - A Bibliometric Study

Abstract

Objective : During the last 2 decades, distinguished studies have been produced in the area of biomedical research assessment. Among the poorly studied fields are the gastroenterology and hepatology. In this study, we aim to assess the status of gastroenterology and hepatology research in the 20 th century (2000-2018), where we will assess the emergence of gastroenterology and hepatology research in each year, its open access status and countries and journals the research is published in. Methods : We used Web of Science database to search for articles and reviews published in the field of gastroenterology and hepatology in the years from January 1 st , 2000 to December 31 st , 2018. Among the variables we assessed, yearly trend, open access publications, countries, journals, and top cited articles. Results : A total of 203,438 publications were retrieved by our search, of which 66,164 (32.5%) were open access publications. The yearly trend in total publication output showed a steady increase until 2015, followed by a steady decline. For country analyses, Japan has emerged to be the 2 nd highest country with research output in gastroenterology and hepatology. World Journal of gastroenterology remained to be the highest publishing journal in this field. Conclusion : The gastroenterology and hepatology field is rapidly expanding during the last two decades. This study provided an overall assessment of this field, taking advantage of the advanced field indexing service by Web of Science database.