Systematic Reviews
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Orthop. Jun 18, 2017; 8(6): 514-523
Published online Jun 18, 2017. doi: 10.5312/wjo.v8.i6.514
Worldwide orthopaedic research activity 2010-2014: Publication rates in the top 15 orthopaedic journals related to population size and gross domestic product
Erik Hohmann, Vaida Glatt, Kevin Tetsworth
Erik Hohmann, Medical School, University of Queensland, Herston 4006, Australia
Erik Hohmann, Medical School, Faculty of Health, University of Pretoria, Pretoria 0002, South Africa
Erik Hohmann, Department of Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine, Valiant Clinic/Houston Methodist Group, Dubai 414296, United Arab Emirates
Vaida Glatt, University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, TX 78229, United States
Kevin Tetsworth, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Royal Brisbane Hospital, Herston 4006, Australia
Kevin Tetsworth, Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, University of Queensland, Herston 4006, Australia
Author contributions: Hohmann E designed and performed the research; Hohmann E analyzed the data; Hohmann E, Glatt V and Tetsworth K wrote the paper; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Data sharing statement: The technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset are available from the corresponding author at ehohmann@hotmail.com.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (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: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Erik Hohmann, FRCS, FRCS (Tr&Orth), MD, PhD, Department of Orthopedic Surgery and Sports Medicine, Valiant Clinic/Houston Methodist Group, Dubai 414296, United Arab Emirates. ehohmann@hotmail.com
Telephone: +971-4-3788818 Fax: +971-4-3788718
Received: October 25, 2016
Peer-review started: October 28, 2016
First decision: December 1, 2016
Revised: December 12, 2016
Accepted: March 23, 2017
Article in press: April 18, 2017
Published online: June 18, 2017
Processing time: 233 Days and 18.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The total number of publications by a country is one of the best indicators of research output and productivity, and is an important aspect of clinical excellence. Our results demonstrate that the United States collectively published more articles and accumulated the highest number of impact factors during the study period, and confirms its overwhelming dominance of publications in the fifteen highest ranked journals in orthopaedics. However, after adjusting for population size, Switzerland was the most academically productive nation. Similarly, after adjusting the number of publications with respect to GDP, Croatia was the most productive, and “cost effective” country.