Scientometrics
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Meta-Anal. Apr 28, 2020; 8(2): 163-172
Published online Apr 28, 2020. doi: 10.13105/wjma.v8.i2.163
Chinese research into ulcerative colitis from 1978 to 2017: A bibliometric analysis
Min Zhu, Jing-Xi Mu, Ming-Shan Jiang, Arjudeb Mukherjee, Zhen Zeng, Yi-Ding Chen, Xiao-Li Yang, Hu Zhang
Min Zhu, Jing-Xi Mu, Ming-Shan Jiang, Zhen Zeng, Yi-Ding Chen, Xiao-Li Yang, Hu Zhang, Department of Gastroenterology and Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, Sichuan Province, China
Arjudeb Mukherjee, West China School of Medicine, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, Sichuan Province, China
Author contributions: Zhu M conceived the study, did the statistical analysis, and drafted the manuscript; Mu JX, Jiang MS, and Yang XL performed the database research and made critical revisions to the manuscript; Zeng Z, Chen YD, and Mukherjee A recorded and checked relevant information and did the statistical analysis; Zhang H supervised the study and edited the manuscript; all of the authors approved the version of the article to be published.
Supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 81570502; and 1.3.5. Project for Disciplines of Excellence, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, No. ZYJC18037.
Conflict-of-interest statement: There is 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: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Hu Zhang, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Director, Department of Gastroenterology and Center for Inflammatory Bowel Disease, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, 37 Guoxue Lane, Wuhou District, Chengdu 610041, Sichuan Province, China. zhanghu@scu.edu.cn
Received: September 29, 2019
Peer-review started: September 29, 2019
First decision: October 23, 2019
Revised: February 22, 2020
Accepted: March 27, 2020
Article in press: March 27, 2020
Published online: April 28, 2020
Abstract
BACKGROUND

Over the last 40 years, with accumulating evidence demonstrating a significant increase in the incidence of ulcerative colitis (UC) in China, the number of studies on UC has been rapidly increasing. But it still lacks a comprehensive meta-analysis of publications regarding UC for the last four decades in China. Thus, a bibliometric analysis of UC is warranted to investigate the trend and distribution of the publications on UC in China in recent years. And it is supposed that the number of the papers related to UC increased by year.

AIM

To investigate the current status of research output from Chinese studies related to UC during the period of 1978 to 2017, with special attention paid to the distribution of publication dates, journals, regions, and research organizations.

METHODS

Publications on UC were searched in the Chinese periodical database SinoMed from January 1978 to December 2017. The search term used for retrieval was “ulcerative colitis”. The language of the publications was restricted to English or Chinese. The studies have to be performed in China. Then, a bibliometric analysis was performed on the distribution of publication dates, journals, regions, and research organizations with EndNote, Excel, MySQL, and GraphPad Prism.

RESULTS

A total of 16257 papers matched the search criteria, which included 7561 papers published in core journals, 4641 evidence-based articles, and 4177 publications of randomized controlled trials. These papers were mainly published in Chinese Journal of Coloproctology, World Chinese Journal of Digestology, Chinese Journal of Digestion, Chinese Journal of Integrated Traditional and Western Medicine on Digestion, and Modern Journal of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine. In particular, the majority of these organizations were located in Jiangsu, Henan, Shandong, and Guangdong Provinces which are rich areas or have the largest population per province. Most of these studies were conducted by academic institutions.

CONCLUSION

Over the past four decades, the output of research into UC in China has increased significantly, with academic institutions playing a central role in the academic field, but the number and quality of these researches vary substantially among different regions.

Keywords: Ulcerative colitis, Bibliometric analysis, SinoMed, Literature research, Core journal, Academic institutions

Core tip: Ulcerative colitis is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the gastrointestinal tract. This bibliometric analysis indicated a significant increase in the number of Chinese ulcerative colitis publications over the last 40 years. Meanwhile, the numbers of both evidence-based articles and publications of randomized controlled trial were also increased, but the proportions of evidence-based articles and publications of randomized controlled trial were inadequate. In addition, region distribution of these publications was unbalanced, Jiangsu, Henan, Shandong, Guangdong Provinces featured significantly in the research filed, and most of the studies were conducted by academic institutions.