Ovarian cancer: density equalizing mapping of the global research architecture

  • BACKGROUND: Despite its impact on female health worldwide, no efforts have been made to depict the global architecture of ovarian cancer research and to understand the trends in the related literature. Hence, it was the objective of this study to assess the global scientific performance chronologically, geographically and in regards to economic benchmarks using bibliometric tools and density equalizing map projections. METHODS: The NewQIS platform was employed to identify all ovarian cancer related articles published in the Web of Science since 1900. The items were analyzed regarding quantitative aspects (e.g. publication date, country of origin) and parameters describing the recognition of the work by the scientific community (e.g. citation rates). RESULTS: 23,378 articles on ovarian cancer were analyzed. The USA had the highest activity of ovarian cancer research with a total of n = 9312 ovarian cancer-specific publications, followed by the UK (n = 1900), China (n = 1813), Germany (n = 1717) and Japan (n = 1673). Ovarian cancer-specific country h-index also showed a leading position of the USA with an h-index (HI) of 207, followed by the UK (HI = 122), Canada (HI = 99), Italy (HI = 97), Germany (HI = 84), and Japan (HI = 81). In the socio-economic analysis, the USA were ranked first with an average of 175.6 ovarian cancer-related publications per GDP per capita in 1000 US-$, followed by Italy with an index level of 46.85, the UK with 45.48, and Japan with 43.3. Overall, the USA and Western European nations, China and Japan constituted the scientific power players publishing the majority of highly cited ovarian cancer-related articles and dominated international collaborative efforts. African, Asian and South American countries played almost no visible role in the scientific community. CONCLUSIONS: The quantity and scientific recognition of publications related to ovarian cancer are continuously increasing. The research endeavors in the field are concentrated in high-income countries with no involvement of lower-resource nations. Hence, worldwide collaborative efforts with the aim to exchange epidemiologic data, resources and knowledge have to be strengthened in the future to successfully alleviate the global burden related to ovarian cancer.

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  • Additional file 1. The glossary describes important terms used in this manuscript.

  • Additional file 2: Figure S1. Density equalizing map of global ovarian cancer incidence numbers. Map depicts the absolute incidence numbers of ovarian cancer of the 25 countries having published more than 100 items on ovarian cancer.

  • Additional file 3: Table S1. Most publishing journals with number of articles, number of citations and citation rate.

  • Additional file 4: Figure S2. Number of articles and citation rate of the most publishing journals regarding ovarian cancer.

  • Additional file 5: Table S2. Most cited articles with country of origin, number of citations and journal.

  • Additional file 6: Figure S3. Subject area analysis of ovarian cancer research. A) Number of articles and citations per subject category. B) Relative proportions of the most assigned subject areas in most active countries.

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Author:Dörthe BrüggmannORCiDGND, Katharina Pulch, Doris KlingelhöferORCiD, Celeste Leigh Pearce, Jan David Alexander GronebergORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-426251
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1186/s12942-016-0076-2
Pubmed Id:https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28086974
Parent Title (English):International journal of health geographics
Publisher:BioMed Central
Place of publication:London
Document Type:Article
Language:English
Year of Completion:2017
Date of first Publication:2017/01/13
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2017/01/16
Tag:Density equalizing mapping; Ovarian carcinoma; Socio-economic analysis
Volume:16
Issue:3
Page Number:14
Note:
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
HeBIS-PPN:423544888
Institutes:Medizin / Medizin
Dewey Decimal Classification:6 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften / 61 Medizin und Gesundheit / 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoCreative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0