A worldwide bibliometric analysis of published literature in plastic and reconstructive surgery.

Abstract

Bibliometrics is the analysis of the content and citations of journal articles to quantify trends in published data. In this study, we aimed to use bibliometric analysis to identify the contribution of various countries to the plastic surgical literature over a 5-year period. In this study, the top 20 countries publishing articles on surgery and 10 plastic surgical journals with the highest impact factors (IFs) were included. The number of scientific articles published in each journal per year (2009-2013) in each country was found using PubMed. As a marker of quality, the mean IF for each country was calculated using the number of articles and journal IF. These data were compared with population, gross domestic product (GDP) and dollars spent on research. A total of 10,051 articles were included. The USA was the largest contributor, with 4008 articles published over 5 years, followed by the UK (1163 articles). The USA's mean IF was 2.084, closely followed by Canada (2.037). The UK had the highest number of publications per million population (PMP; 18.14 publications PMP). When considering the overall research spending per country, Turkey had the most cost-effective publication output. The least cost-effective country was South Korea. Sweden, the Netherlands and Canada had the greatest increase in publication quality. Bibliometric analysis can be used to identify not only major centres of plastic surgical research, such as the USA and UK, but also centres that produce high-quality data, such as Canada, and cost-effective research, such as Turkey. It can also highlight the areas of increasing success in plastic surgical research.