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Objective: Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is associated with substantial morbidity for mothers and their offspring. While clinical and basic research activities on this important disease grow constantly, there is no concise analysis of global architecture of GDM research. Hence, it was the objective of this study to assess the global scientific performance chronologically, geographically and in relation to existing research networks and gender distribution of publishing authors.
Study design: On the basis of the New Quality and Quantity Indices in Science (NewQIS) platform, scientometric methods were combined with modern visualizing techniques such as density equalizing mapping, and the Web of Science database was used to assess GDM-related entries from 1900 to 2012.
Results: Twelve thousand five hundred four GDM-related publications were identified and analyzed. The USA (4295 publications) and the UK (1354 publications) dominated the field concerning research activity, overall citations and country-specific Hirsch-Index, which quantified the impact of a country’s published research on the scientific community. Semi-qualitative indices such as country-specific citation rates ranked New Zealand and the UK at top positions. Annual collaborative publications increased steeply between the years 1990 and 2012 (71 to 1157 respectively). Subject category analysis pointed to a minor interest of public health issues in GDM research. Gender analysis in terms of publication authorship revealed a clear dominance of the male gender until 2005; then a trend towards gender equity started and the activity of female scientists grew visibly in many countries. The country-specific gender analysis revealed large differences, i.e. female scientists dominated the scientific output in the USA, whereas the majority of research was published by male authors in countries such as Japan.
Conclusion: This study provides the first global sketch of GDM research architecture. While North-American and Western-European countries were dominating the GDM-related scientific landscape, a disparity exists in terms of research output between developed and low-resource countries. Since GDM is linked to considerable mortality and morbidity of mothers and their offspring and constitutes a tremendous burden for the healthcare systems in underserved countries, our findings emphasize the need to address disparities by fostering research endeavors, public health programs and collaborative efforts in these nations.
Background: Imbalances in female career promotion are a key factor of gender disparities at the workplace. They may lead to stress and stress-related diseases including burnout, depression or cardiovascular diseases. Since this problem cannot be generalized and varies between different fields, new approaches are needed to assess and describe the magnitude of the problem in single fields of work.
Methods: To construct a new index, operating figures of female and male medical students were collected for Germany in a period over 15 years and their progression throughout their studies towards specialization and academic chair positions. By the use of different female to male ratios (f:m), we constructed an index that describes the extend by which women can ascent in their academic career by using the field of academic medicine as an example.
Results: A medical student f:m ratio of 1.54 (52,366 female vs. 34,010 male) was found for Germany in 2013. In 1998, this f:m ratio was 0.999. In the same year (2013), the OB/GYN hospital specialists’ f:m ratio was 1.566 (3347 female vs. 2137 male physicians) and 0.577 (516 female vs 894 male physicians) for ENT hospital specialists, respectively. The f:m ratios concerning chairs of OB/GYN and ENT were 0.105 and 0.1, respectively. Then an index was generated that incorporated these operating figures with the student f:m ratio as denominator and the chair f:m ratio as numerator while the hospital specialist f:m ratio served as a corrector in the numerator in order to adjust to the attraction of a given field to female physicians. As a result, the index was 0.044 for OB/GYN and 0.113 for ENT instead of ideally ~1 in a completely gender harmonized situation.
Conclusion: In summary, a new index to describe female career advancement was established for academic medicine. By the use of this index, different academic and medical fields can now be compared to each other and future benchmarks could be proposed. Also, country differences may be examined using the proposed index and the success of specific funding programs.
Objective: Worldwide, the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) represents the predominant viral agent causing bronchiolitis and pneumonia in children. To conduct research and tackle existing healthcare disparities, RSV-related research activities around the globe need to be described. Hence, we assessed the associated scientific output (represented by research articles) by geographical, chronological and socioeconomic criteria and analysed the authors publishing in the field by gender. Also, the 15 most cited articles and the most prolific journals were identified for RSV research.
Design: Retrospective, descriptive study.
Setting: The NewQIS (New Quality and Quantity Indices in Science) platform was employed to identify RSV-related articles published in the Web of Science until 2013. We performed a numerical analysis of all articles, and examined citation-based aspects (eg, citation rates); results were visualised by density equalising mapping tools.
Results: We identified 4600 RSV-related articles. The USA led the field; US-American authors published 2139 articles (46.5%% of all identified articles), which have been cited 83 000 times. When output was related to socioeconomic benchmarks such as gross domestic product or Research and Development expenditures, Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia and Chile were ranked in leading positions. A total of 614 articles on RSV (13.34% of all articles) were attributed to scientific collaborations. These were primarily established between high-income countries. The gender analysis indicated that male scientists dominated in all countries except Brazil.
Conclusions: The majority of RSV-related research articles originated from high-income countries whereas developing nations showed only minimal publication productivity and were barely part of any collaborative networks. Hence, research capacity in these nations should be increased in order to assist in addressing inequities in resource allocation and the clinical burden of RSV in these countries.
Gendermetrics.NET : a novel software for analyzing the gender representation in scientific authoring
(2016)
Background: Imbalances in female career promotion are believed to be strong in the field of academic science. A primary parameter to analyze gender inequalities is the gender authoring in scientific publications. Since the presently available data on gender distribution is largely limited to underpowered studies, we here develop a new approach to analyze authors’ genders in large bibliometric databases.
Results: A SQL-Server based multiuser software suite was developed that serves as an integrative tool for analyzing bibliometric data with a special emphasis on gender and topographical analysis. The presented system allows seamless integration, inspection, modification, evaluation and visualization of bibliometric data. By providing an adaptive and almost fully automatic integration and analysis process, the inter-individual variability of analysis is kept at a low level. Depending on the scientific question, the system enables the user to perform a scientometric analysis including its visualization within a short period of time.
Conclusion: In summary, a new software suite for analyzing gender representations in scientific articles was established. The system is suitable for the comparative analysis of scientific structures on the level of continents, countries, cities, city regions, institutions, research fields and journals.