Peer-reviewed veterinary case report
Use of H-Index and Other Bibliometric Indicators to Evaluate Research Productivity Outcome on Swine Diseases.
- Journal:
- PloS one
- Year:
- 2016
- Authors:
- Díaz, Ivan et al.
- Affiliation:
- IRTA · Spain
Plain-English summary
This study looked at a way to measure how much research has been done on diseases that affect pigs, using a tool called the H-index, which helps evaluate scientific productivity. Researchers created a database of 137 infectious agents that can affect pigs and examined their research impact based on how often they are cited in scientific papers. They found that the H-index scores varied widely, with some pathogens like E. coli and certain viruses having much higher scores than others. The study also noted that most research comes from North America and Europe, and it suggested a new method for organizing and understanding research contributions in this field. Overall, the findings highlight the importance of certain pathogens in pig health research and how research output has increased over time.
Abstract
H-index is the most commonly applied tool to evaluate scientific productivity. In this study, the use of the H-index to evaluate scientific production in swine veterinary medicine was explored. A database of 137 pig infectious agents was constructed, including its taxonomic division, zoonotic potential, status as emerging pathogen and whether it was OIE-listed. The H-index and the total number of citations were calculated for those pathogens, the location of the affiliation of the first author of each paper included in the H-index core was registered and, for the ten pathogens with the highest H-index, evolution over time was measured. H-index values were compared to the M quotient, A-index, G-index, HG-index and the G/H ratio. H-indices were found to be severely affected by search accuracy and the database was hand curated. Swine pathogen H-indexes were highly dispersed ranging from 0 to 106 and were generally higher for pathogens causing endemic diseases in large pig producing countries. Indeed, the three top pathogens were Escherichia coli, Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus and Porcine circovirus type 2 with H-indices 106, 95 and 85, respectively. H-indices of viruses and bacteria were significantly higher (P<0.001) than other pathogen types. Also, non-zoonotic pathogens had higher H-indices than zoonotic pathogens (p<0.009) while no differences could be found for being listed by the OIE. For emerging diseases, only non-emerging viruses had higher H-index (p = 0.02). The study of H-indexes over time revealed three general patterns and that they had increased mainly after the 1980's. As expected, there were strong geographic patterns in terms of authorship and North America (38%) and Europe (46%) coped the majority of the papers. Finally, in order to quantify the contribution of a subject to a specific field, a new index "Deciphering Citations Organized by Subject" (Dcos) is proposed.
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Search related cases →Original publication: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26930283/