Department of Pediatric Surgery, University Hospital of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany.
Department of Pediatric Surgery, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
BMC Cancer. 2020 May 29;20(1):486. doi: 10.1186/s12885-020-06974-3.
Thousands of research articles on neuroblastoma have been published over the past few decades; however, the heterogeneity and variable quality of scholarly data may challenge scientists or clinicians to survey all of the available information. Hence, holistic measurement and analyzation of neuroblastoma-related literature with the help of sophisticated mathematical tools could provide deep insights into global research performance and the collaborative architectonical structure within the neuroblastoma scientific community. In this scientometric study, we aim to determine the extent of the scientific output related to neuroblastoma research between 1980 and 2018.
We applied novel scientometric tools, including Bibliometrix R package, biblioshiny, VOSviewer, and CiteSpace IV for comprehensive science mapping analysis of extensive bibliographic metadata, which was retrieved from the Web of ScienceTM Core Collection database.
We demonstrate the enormous proliferation of neuroblastoma research during last the 38 years, including 12,435 documents published in 1828 academic journals by 36,908 authors from 86 different countries. These documents received a total of 316,017 citations with an average citation per document of 28.35 ± 7.7. We determine the proportion of highly cited and never cited papers, "occasional" and prolific authors and journals. Further, we show 12 (13.9%) of 86 countries were responsible for 80.4% of neuroblastoma-related research output.
These findings are crucial for researchers, clinicians, journal editors, and others working in neuroblastoma research to understand the strengths and potential gaps in the current literature and to plan future investments in data collection and science policy. This first scientometric study of global neuroblastoma research performance provides valuable insight into the scientific landscape, co-authorship network architecture, international collaboration, and interaction within the neuroblastoma community.
在过去的几十年里，已经发表了数千篇关于神经母细胞瘤的研究文章；然而，学术数据的异质性和可变质量可能会使科学家或临床医生难以调查所有可用信息。因此，借助复杂的数学工具对神经母细胞瘤相关文献进行全面测量和分析，可以深入了解全球研究绩效和神经母细胞瘤科学界的合作架构。在这项科学计量学研究中，我们旨在确定 1980 年至 2018 年期间与神经母细胞瘤研究相关的科学产出的程度。
我们应用了新颖的科学计量学工具，包括 Bibliometrix R 包、biblioshiny、VOSviewer 和 CiteSpace IV，对从 Web of ScienceTM Core Collection 数据库中检索到的广泛文献元数据进行全面的科学图谱分析。
我们展示了过去 38 年来神经母细胞瘤研究的巨大增长，包括 12435 篇发表在 1828 种学术期刊上的文献，作者来自 86 个不同的国家，共有 36908 位作者。这些文献共被引用 316017 次，平均每篇文献被引 28.35±7.7 次。我们确定了高被引和从未被引论文、“偶尔”和多产作者和期刊的比例。此外，我们发现 86 个国家中有 12 个（13.9%）国家负责了 80.4%的神经母细胞瘤相关研究产出。
这些发现对于从事神经母细胞瘤研究的研究人员、临床医生、期刊编辑和其他人员来说至关重要，有助于了解当前文献的优势和潜在差距，并为数据收集和科学政策制定规划未来的投资。这项关于全球神经母细胞瘤研究绩效的首次科学计量学研究提供了对科学格局、合著网络架构、国际合作以及神经母细胞瘤社区内互动的有价值的见解。
