Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
J Transl Med. 2011 May 11;9:57. doi: 10.1186/1479-5876-9-57.
Scientists and experts in science policy have become increasingly interested in strengthening translational research. Efforts to understand the nature of translational research and monitor policy interventions face an obstacle: how can translational research be defined in order to facilitate analysis of it? We describe methods of scientometric analysis that can do this.
We downloaded bibliographic and citation data from all articles published in 2009 in the 75 leading journals in cancer and in cardiovascular medicine (roughly 15,000 articles for each field). We calculated citation relationships between journals and between articles and we extracted the most prevalent natural language concepts.
Network analysis and mapping revealed polarization between basic and clinical research, but with translational links between these poles. The structure of the translational research in cancer and cardiac medicine is, however, quite different. In the cancer literature the translational interface is composed of different techniques (e.g., gene expression analysis) that are used across the various subspecialties (e.g., specific tumor types) within cancer research and medicine. In the cardiac literature, the clinical problems are more disparate (i.e., from congenital anomalies to coronary artery disease); although no distinctive translational interface links these fields, translational research does occur in certain subdomains, especially in research on atherosclerosis and hypertension.
These techniques can be used to monitor the continuing evolution of translational research in medicine and the impact of interventions designed to enhance it.
科学家和科学政策专家越来越关注加强转化研究。为了理解转化研究的本质并监测政策干预措施，他们面临着一个障碍：如何定义转化研究以便于对其进行分析？我们描述了可以做到这一点的科学计量分析方法。
我们从癌症和心血管医学领域的 75 种领先期刊 2009 年发表的所有文章中下载了书目和引文数据（每个领域约有 15000 篇文章）。我们计算了期刊之间以及文章之间的引文关系，并提取了最常见的自然语言概念。
网络分析和映射显示了基础研究和临床研究之间的两极分化，但这两者之间存在转化联系。然而，癌症和心脏医学中的转化研究结构却大不相同。在癌症文献中，转化接口由不同的技术（例如基因表达分析）组成，这些技术在癌症研究和医学的各个子专业（例如特定的肿瘤类型）中都有应用。在心脏文献中，临床问题更加多样化（例如，从先天性异常到冠状动脉疾病）；尽管没有独特的转化接口将这些领域联系起来，但在某些子领域确实存在转化研究，特别是在动脉粥样硬化和高血压研究中。
这些技术可用于监测医学转化研究的持续演变以及旨在增强转化研究的干预措施的影响。
