Ugolini Donatella, Puntoni Riccardo, Perera Frederica P, Schulte Paul A, Bonassi Stefano
Dipartimento di Oncologia, Biologia e Genetica, University of Genoa, Genoa 16132, Italy.
Carcinogenesis. 2007 Aug;28(8):1774-9. doi: 10.1093/carcin/bgm129. Epub 2007 Jun 4.
The main purpose of this research was to compare the scientific production in the field of cancer molecular epidemiology among countries and to evaluate the publication trend between 1995 and 2004.
A bibliometric study was carried out searching the PubMed database with a combined search strategy based on the keywords listed in the medical subject headings and a free text search. Only articles from a representative subset of 92 journals--accounting for 80% of papers identified--were selected for the analysis, and the resulting 13,240 abstracts were manually checked according to a list of basic inclusion criteria. The study evaluated the number of publications and the impact factor (mean and sum), absolute and normalized by country population and gross domestic product.
A total of 3,842 citations were finally selected for the analysis. Thirty-seven percent came from the European Union (UK, Germany, Italy, France and Sweden ranking at the top), 31.6% from USA and 9.7% from Japan. The highest mean impact factor was reported for Canada (6.3), USA (5.9), Finland (5.8) and UK (5.2). Finland, Sweden and Israel had the best ratio between scientific production and available resources. 'Genetic polymorphism, glutathione transferase, breast neoplasm, risk factors, case-control studies and polymerase chain reaction' were the most used keywords in each of the subgroups evaluated, although inclusion criteria may have privileged studies dealing with exogenous carcinogens.
Cancer molecular epidemiology is an expanding area attracting an increasing interest. The identification of an operative definition is a necessary condition to give to this discipline a unique scientific identity.
本研究的主要目的是比较各国在癌症分子流行病学领域的科研产出，并评估1995年至2004年期间的发表趋势。
开展了一项文献计量学研究，使用基于医学主题词表中列出的关键词的组合检索策略和自由文本检索在PubMed数据库中进行检索。仅从92种期刊的代表性子集中选取文章进行分析，这些期刊的论文占检索到的论文的80%，并根据一系列基本纳入标准对所得的13240篇摘要进行人工核对。该研究评估了发表数量以及影响因子（平均值和总和），并按国家人口和国内生产总值进行了绝对和标准化处理。
最终共选取3842条引文进行分析。37%来自欧盟（英国、德国、意大利、法国和瑞典位居前列），31.6%来自美国，9.7%来自日本。据报道，加拿大（6.3）、美国（5.9）、芬兰（5.8）和英国（5.2）的平均影响因子最高。芬兰、瑞典和以色列在科研产出与可用资源之间的比例最佳。“基因多态性、谷胱甘肽转移酶、乳腺肿瘤、危险因素、病例对照研究和聚合酶链反应”是每个评估亚组中使用最多的关键词，尽管纳入标准可能使涉及外源性致癌物的研究具有优势。
癌症分子流行病学是一个不断扩展的领域，正吸引着越来越多的关注。确定一个可操作的定义是赋予这一学科独特科学身份的必要条件。
