Abstract
Background: The purpose of this study is to provide a report on scientific production during the period 2010–2014 in order to identify the major topics as well as the predominant actors (journals, countries, continents) involved in the field of eye disease. Methods: A PubMed search was carried out to extract articles related to eye diseases during the period 2010–2014. Data were downloaded and processed through developed PHP scripts for further analysis. Results: A total of 62,123 articles were retrieved. A total of 3,368 different journals were found, and 19 journals were identified as “core journals” according to Braford’s law. English was by far the predominant language. A total of 853,182 MeSH terms were found, representing an average of 13.73 (SD = 4.98) MeSH terms per article. Among these 853,182 MeSH terms, 14,689 different MeSH terms were identified. Vision Disorders, Glaucoma, Diabetic Retinopathy, Macular Degeneration, and Cataract were the most frequent five MeSH terms related to eye diseases. The analysis of the total number of publications showed that Europe and Asia were the most productive continents, and the USA and China the most productive countries. Interestingly, using the mean Five-Year Impact Factor, the two most productive continents were North America and Oceania. After adjustment for population, the overall ranking positions changed in favor of smaller countries (i.e. Iceland, Switzerland, Denmark, and New Zealand), while after adjustment for Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the overall ranking positions changed in favor of some developing countries (Malawi, Guatemala, Singapore). Conclusions: Due to the large number of articles included and the numerous parameters analyzed, this study provides a wide view of scientific productivity related to eye diseases during the period 2010–2014 and allows us to better understand this field.
Highlights
Bibliometrics has been defined as the use of statistical methods to analyze a body of literature to reveal historical development through the scientific and quantitative study of publications (Young & Belanger, 1983)
The difference in growth rates between the growth rate of eye diseases and all scientific production in the PubMed database is equal to −2.32 (4.27 − 6.59), which indicates a moderate interest of the scientific community for eye diseases for the studied period, and a stabilization of publication rate (Michon & Tummers, 2009)
There are no similar studies examining worldwide research related to ophthalmology, and such an analysis of articles related to eye diseases has never been done
Summary
Bibliometrics has been defined as the use of statistical methods to analyze a body of literature to reveal historical development through the scientific and quantitative study of publications (Young & Belanger, 1983). The main purpose of this paper is to provide a report on scientific production in the field of eye diseases. The purpose of this study is to provide a report on scientific production during the period 2010–2014 in order to identify the major topics as well as the predominant actors (journals, countries, continents) involved in the field of eye disease. Conclusions: Due to the large number of articles included and the numerous parameters analyzed, this study provides a wide view of scientific productivity related to eye diseases during the period 2010–2014 and allows us to better understand this field
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