The use of the Hirsch index in benchmarking hepatic surgery research

MRET: Modified Recursive Elimination Technique for ranking author assessment parameters

In scientific research, assessing the impact and influence of authors is crucial for evaluating their scholarly contributions. Whereas in literature, multitudinous parameters have been developed to quantify the productivity and significance of researchers, including the publication count, citation count, well-known h index and its extensions and variations. However, with a plethora of available assessment metrics, it is vital to identify and prioritize the most effective metrics. To address the complexity of this task, we employ a powerful deep learning technique known as the Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) classifier for the classification and the ranking purposes. By leveraging the MLP's capacity to discern patterns within datasets, we assign importance scores to each parameter using the proposed modified recursive elimination technique. Based on the importance scores, we ranked these parameters. Furthermore, in this study, we put forth a comprehensive statistical analysis of the top-ranked author assessment parameters, encompassing a vast array of 64 distinct metrics. This analysis gives us treasured insights in between these parameters, shedding light on the potential correlations and dependencies that may affect assessment outcomes. In the statistical analysis, we combined these parameters by using seven well-known statistical methods, such as arithmetic means, harmonic means, geometric means etc. After combining the parameters, we sorted the list of each pair of parameters and analyzed the top 10, 50, and 100 records. During this analysis, we counted the occurrence of the award winners. For experimental proposes, data collection was done from the field of Mathematics. This dataset consists of 525 individuals who are yet to receive their awards along with 525 individuals who have been recognized as potential award winners by certain well known and prestigious scientific societies belonging to the fields' of mathematics in the last three decades. The results of this study revealed that, in ranking of the author assessment parameters, the normalized h index achieved the highest importance score as compared to the remaining sixty-three parameters. Furthermore, the statistical analysis results revealed that the Trigonometric Mean (TM) outperformed the other six statistical models. Moreover, based on the analysis of the parameters, specifically the M Quotient and FG index, it is evident that combining these parameters with any other parameter using various statistical models consistently produces excellent results in terms of the percentage score for returning awardees.

The top 100. Review of the most cited articles on pancreas and laparoscopy

INTRODUCTION

The number of citations is considered as an indirect indicator of the merit of an article, journal or researcher, although it is not an infallible method to determine scientific quality. Our goal is to determine the characteristics of the articles most cited about pancreas and laparoscopy.

METHODS

We performed a search of all articles published in any journal about pancreas and laparoscopy until September 2019 and selected the 100 most cited papers. We recorded number of citations, journal, year of publication, quartil, impact factor, institution, country, authors type of paper, type of surgery, topic and area.

RESULTS

The top 100 citations account 10,970 citations in total. The journal with the most articles is Surgical Endoscopy and 2007 is the year with the highest number of articles in the top 100 citations. The percentage of publications from America and Europe are similar. Case series is the most frequently paper, outcomes/morbidity is the most frequently discussed topic, and distal pancreatectomy is the most frequently type of surgery.

CONCLUSIONS

This bibliometric study on pancreas and laparoscopy is conditioned by the time factor, since laparoscopy has arrived later at pancreatic surgery, probably due to the morbidity and mortality associated with pancreatic surgery and the need for a high specialization in this field. The literature is recent and scarce. More and better-quality studies are needed in this field.

Why is reporting quality improvement so hard? A qualitative study in perioperative care

OBJECTIVES

Quality improvement (QI) may help to avert or mitigate the risks of suboptimal care, but it is often poorly reported in the healthcare literature. We aimed to identify the influences on reporting QI in the area of perioperative care, with a view to informing improvements in reporting QI across healthcare.

DESIGN

Qualitative interview study.

SETTING

Healthcare and academic organisations in Australia, Europe and North America.

PARTICIPANTS

Stakeholders involved in or influencing the publication, writing or consumption of reports of QI studies in perioperative care.

RESULTS

Forty-two participants from six countries took part in the study. Participants included 15 authors (those who write QI reports), 12 consumers of QI reports (practitioners who apply QI research in practice), 11 journal editors and 4 authors of reporting guidelines. Participants identified three principal challenges in achieving high-quality QI reporting. First, the broad scope of QI reporting-ranging from small local projects to multisite research across different disciplines-causes uncertainty about where QI work should be published. Second, context is fundamental to the success of a QI intervention but is difficult to report in ways that support replication and development. Third, reporting is adversely affected by both proximal influences (such as lack of time to write up QI) and more distal, structural influences (such as norms about the format and content of biomedical research reporting), leading to incomplete reporting of QI findings.

CONCLUSIONS

Divergent terminology and understandings of QI, along with existing reporting norms and the challenges of capturing context adequately yet succinctly, make for challenges in reporting QI. We offer suggestions for improvement.

Nursing and midwifery research activity in Arab countries from 1950 to 2017

BACKGROUND

Nursing and midwifery research activity is an important indicator of the quality of healthcare services and the status of nursing profession. The main aim of this study was to assess the research activity in nursing and midwifery field in Arab countries.

METHOD

The current study implemented bibliometric method using Scopus database. The search strategy used country affiliation or journal name or keywords as a strategy to retrieve the required documents. The study period was from 1950 to2017. Analysis included a presentation of bibliometric indicators and VOSviewer mapping of the retrieved data.

RESULT

2935 documents were retrieved making up less than 1% of global nursing and midwifery research output. Of the retrieved documents, 25% were published in high rank (first quartile = Q1) journals. The majority (56.7%) of the retrieved documents were published in the last five years of the study period. The retrieved documents received an average of 6.9 citations per document with an h-index of 47. The total number of authors who took part in publishing the retrieved documents was 10,572, giving an average of 3.6 authors per article. Jordan ranked first in research output. Researchers from Jordan took part in over than one third (1023; 34.9%) of the retrieved documents. Lebanon (35.5%) ranked first in the percentage of documents published in Q1 journals. The United Arab Emirates ranked first in the percentage (67.4%) of publications with international authors. The most active journal involved in publishing nursing research from Arab countries was Life Science Journal (158; 5.4%). The University of Jordan was the most productive institution while the American University of Beirut ranked first in the percentage (36.9%) of documents published in Q1 journals. Author keyword analysis and10 most cited articles showed that non-communicable diseases and nursing education were the focus of nursing research in Arab countries.

CONCLUSIONS

Nursing and midwifery research activity in Arab countries has dramatically increased especially over the past five years. Despite this, nursing research is still in its infancy, lagging in quantity and quality compared to developed countries.

The top 100: A review of the most cited articles in Surgery

INTRODUCTION

We performed a study of the top 100 most cited articles in the five general surgery journals with the highest impact according to Journal Citation Report.

METHODS

We selected the five journals with the highest impact in 2015: Annals of Surgery, British Journal of Surgery, JAMA Surgery, Surgery, and Journal of the American College of Surgeons. In January 2017, using the Web of Science application, we performed a search of all articles published by these journals and identified the 100 most cited articles (top 100). We evaluated the number of citations, year of publication, type of article, country and hospital of the article, area of interest and number of authors.

RESULTS

The median number of citations per top 100 paper was 490. Twenty percent of the top 100 papers have been published since 2000. Overall, 70% are original papers, 8% randomized control trials, 11% reviews, 1% meta-analyses and 11% other subtypes. There are 13% proceedings papers. Sixty-one percent are from the US. The most frequently discussed topic is hepato-pancreato-biliary surgery (33%).

CONCLUSIONS

The top 100 most cited articles tend to be original articles describing studies carried out in the US, reporting significant surgical breakthroughs. Hepato-pancreato-biliary surgery is the most common subject area. Annals of Surgery had twice as many citations as the other journals studied. The archetypal article of the Top15 most cited is an original paper published in the twentieth century, with an average of 2000 citations.

Shining Sunlight on Industry Payments in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery: The Sunshine Act

PURPOSE

To characterize industry payments to oral and maxillofacial surgeons (OMSs) and to determine the accuracy of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Open Payments Databases.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This was a cross-sectional study of the CMS General and Research Payments Databases in 2016 for clinicians categorized as OMSs. General payments include consulting fees, honoraria, gifts, entertainment, food and beverage, travel and education, and others. Research payments include payments associated with research. Variables collected included number of OMSs who received payments, type of and number of payments, total amount paid, geographic distribution, and proportion of funding allotted to research. The accuracy of payee categorization was determined by verifying a random selection of 5% of those categorized as "OMS" in the database with publicly available data. To assess impact on research productivity, the h-index of research payment recipients was calculated.

RESULTS

A total of 6,720 OMSs received industry compensation in 2016. Accuracy was 88% in the General Payments Database and 50% in the Research Payments Database. OMSs received 28,456 general payments totaling $5,971,800.79. The average number of payments and the average amount per payment were 4.27 and $1,597.60, respectively. The CMS reported total research payments of $23,592.17. The 4 verified OMSs received a total of $18,500 in research payments and had an average h-index of 3.25 (range, 0 to 8). The most common payments made were for food and beverage (80.2%), travel and lodging (5.83%), education (3.91%), compensation for services other than consulting (3.1%), and gifts (3.03%). Research accounted for 0.07% of all payments.

CONCLUSION

Although industry payments to OMSs were common, research funding was negligible. Most industry value transfers were related to food and beverage or travel and lodging. Clinicians were accurately classified in the CMS General Payments Database but not in the Research Payments Database.

Entwicklung von Normwerten zur Evaluation individueller psychologischer Forschungsleistungen in Abhängigkeit vom akademischem Alter und der Fachrichtung

Zusammenfassung. Zur Darstellung der Quantität und Qualität von Forschungsleistungen haben sich bibliometrische Indikatoren als nützlich erwiesen. Da diese aber vom akademischen Alter und der Fachrichtung abhängig sind, wird die Entwicklung von Normwerten auf der Grundlage einer repräsentativen Vergleichsstichprobe empfohlen. Zur Berechnung einer Normtabelle für das Fach Psychologie wurden für 877 habilitierte und im Jahr 2013 im deutschsprachigen Raum an staatlich anerkannten Universitäten tätige Psychologinnen und Psychologen der h-Index und die Publikationsanzahl in der Datenbank Scopus erhoben. Neben Unterschieden hinsichtlich des Geschlechts, des Staates, der akademischen Stellung und der Fachrichtung der Wissenschaftler fand sich ein Anstieg der mittleren Publikationsanzahl und des h-Index über die Zeit. In einer Normtabelle werden Perzentile und z-Werte zur Einordnung individueller psychologischer Forschungsleistungen in Abhängigkeit vom akademischen Alter und der Fachrichtung präsentiert. Ihre Anwendung zu Evaluationszwecken und damit verbundene Einschränkungen werden diskutiert. Eine fortlaufende Aktualisierung wird empfohlen.