Scientometrics
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2023. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Aug 18, 2023; 14(8): 641-650
Published online Aug 18, 2023. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v14.i8.641
Scientific publications on orthopedic surgery from three major East Asian countries (2012-2021)
Wei-You Chen, Xin Xiao, Cheng Pan, Fei-Hong Huang, Hong-Yuan Xu, Qing-Jun Wei, Hua Jiang
Wei-You Chen, Xin Xiao, Cheng Pan, Fei-Hong Huang, Hong-Yuan Xu, Hua Jiang, Division of Spine Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning 530021, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China
Qing-Jun Wei, Hua Jiang, Department of Orthopedic Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning 530021, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China
Author contributions: Jiang H conceived and designed the study; Chen WY was involved in data retrieval and data selection, analyzed the data, and wrote the manuscript; Xiao X was involved in statistical analysis and manuscript revision; Pan C, Xu HY, and Huang FH were involved in data search; Jiang H and Wei QJ were involved in the selection of data and contributed analysis tools; All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81860406; Guangxi Natural Science Foundation, No. 2023GXNSFAA026339; and Medical Excellence Award Funded by the Creative Research Development Grant from the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hua Jiang, MD, PhD, Full Professor, Division of Spine Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, No. 6 Shuangyong Road, Nanning 530021, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China. drjianghua@163.com
Received: February 27, 2023
Peer-review started: February 27, 2023
First decision: May 25, 2023
Revised: June 8, 2023
Accepted: July 7, 2023
Article in press: July 7, 2023
Published online: August 18, 2023
Processing time: 171 Days and 8.1 Hours
Abstract
BACKGROUND

East Asia is the most dynamic region in the world and includes three major countries: Japan, South Korea and China. Due to rapid economic growth, orthopedics research in East Asia has achieved great advances during the past 10 years. However, the current status of orthopedic research in Japan, South Korea and China is still unclear.

AIM

To understand the current status of orthopedic research in Japan, South Korea, and China.

METHODS

Journals listed in the ‘‘Orthopedics’’ category of Science Citation Index Expanded subject categories were included. The PubMed and Web of Knowledge electronic databases were searched to identify scientific publications from the selected journals written by researchers from Japan, South Korea and China. A systematic analysis was conducted to analyze orthopedic research articles published in the three countries based on the number of articles, study design, impact factors (IFs) and citations. Furthermore, we also ranked the top 10 countries worldwide with the highest publications in the past 10 years. Additionally, we ranked the top 10 countries with the highest number of publications in the world in the past 10 years. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS 20.0 software (SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, United States), and statistical results are given in Tables and Figures. The Kruskal-Wallis test and the Mann-Whitney test were used to detect differences between countries. The tendency regarding the number of articles was analyzed by curvilinear regression. A two-tailed P < 0.05 was considered significant.

RESULTS

From 2012-2021, a total of 144518 articles were published in the 86 selected orthopedic journals. During this period, the number of worldwide published orthopedic articles has shown an annual increasing trend. A total of 27164 orthopedic research articles were published by Japan, South Korea and China during the past 10 years; 44.32% were from China, 32.98% were from Japan, and 22.70% were from South Korea. From 2012 to 2021, the annual number of articles markedly increased in each of the three countries. Over time, the worldwide share of articles increased substantially in South Korea (3.37% to 6.53%, P < 0.001) and China (5.29% to 9.61%, P < 0.001). However, the worldwide share of articles significantly decreased in Japan (5.22% to 3.80%, P < 0.001). The annual total IFs of articles from China were well above those of articles from Japan and South Korea (36597.69 vs 27244.48 vs 20657.83, P < 0.05). There was no significant difference among the articles in the top 10 high-IF orthopedics journals published from those three countries [South Korea (800) > China (787) > Japan (646), P > 0.05].

CONCLUSION

Over the past 10 years, China’s scientific publications in orthopedic journals have shown an increasing trend. Considering the relative scale of the populations, Japan and South Korea have outpaced China with respect to quality.

Keywords: Japan, South Korea, China, Medical publication, Orthopedics, Research

Core Tip: Our study was the first to systematically analyze and compare the scientific publication trends of orthopedic surgery studies over the past 10 years in three major East Asian countries–i.e., Japan, South Korea, and China–and to summarize the current status of orthopedic science research in these three countries, thus providing useful information for orthopedic science research.