Department of Oncology and Palliative Medicine, Nordland Hospital, Bodø, Norway.
PLoS One. 2012;7(3):e34300. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0034300. Epub 2012 Mar 28.
Research activity related to different aspects of prevention, prediction, diagnosis and treatment of brain metastases has increased during recent years. One of the major databases (Scopus) contains 942 scientific articles that were published during the 5-year time period 2006-2010. Of these, 195 (21%) reported on single patient cases and 12 (1%) were reports of 2 cases. Little is known about their influence on advancement of the field or scientific merits. Do brain metastases case reports attract attention and provide stimuli for further research or do they go largely unrecognized? Different measures of impact, visibility and quality of published research are available, each with its own pros and cons. For the present evaluation, article citation rate was chosen. The median number of citations overall and stratified by year of publication was 0, except for the year 2006 when it was 2. As compared to other articles, case reports remained more often without citation (p<0.05 except for 2006 data). All case reports with 10 or more citations (n = 6) reported on newly introduced anticancer drugs, which commonly are prescribed to treat extracranial metastases, and the responses observed in single patients with brain metastases. Average annual numbers of citations were also calculated. The articles with most citations per year were the same six case reports mentioned above (the only ones that obtained more than 2.0 citations per year). Citations appeared to gradually increase during the first two years after publication but remained on a generally low or modest level. It cannot be excluded that case reports without citation provide interesting information to some clinicians or researchers. Apparently, case reports describing unexpected therapeutic success gain more attention, at least in terms of citation, than others.
近年来，与脑转移的预防、预测、诊断和治疗的各个方面相关的研究活动有所增加。其中一个主要数据库（Scopus）包含了在 2006 年至 2010 年这 5 年期间发表的 942 篇科学文章。其中，195 篇（21%）报告了单个患者病例，12 篇（1%）报告了 2 个病例。这些病例报告对该领域的进展或科学价值的影响知之甚少。脑转移病例报告是否引起关注并为进一步研究提供动力，还是被忽视了？现已有多种不同的影响力、可见度和已发表研究质量的衡量标准，每种都有其优缺点。对于本次评估，选择了文章引用率。总体和按发表年份分层的中位数引用次数均为 0，只有 2006 年为 2。与其他文章相比，病例报告更有可能没有被引用（除 2006 年数据外，p<0.05）。所有有 10 次或更多引用的病例报告（n=6）均报告了新引入的抗癌药物，这些药物通常用于治疗颅外转移，以及在脑转移患者中观察到的反应。还计算了每年的平均引用次数。每年引用次数最多的文章是上面提到的六篇病例报告（唯一每年获得超过 2.0 次引用的报告）。引用似乎在发表后的头两年逐渐增加，但总体上仍处于较低或中等水平。不能排除没有被引用的病例报告向某些临床医生或研究人员提供了有趣的信息。显然，描述意外治疗成功的病例报告比其他报告获得了更多的关注，至少在引用方面是如此。
