Distribution of Citations Received by Scientific Papers Published in the Imaging Literature From 2001 to 2010: Decreasing Inequality and Polarization

Amplifying Research: The Potential for Podcasts to Boost Radiology Journal Article Exposure

Background Podcasts have become an increasingly popular method of communicating information in medicine, including in radiology. However, the effect of podcasts on the reach of journal articles remains unclear. Purpose To evaluate the influence of Radiology podcasts on the performance metrics, including downloads, citations, and Altmetric Attention Score (AAS), of Radiology articles. Materials and Methods This was a retrospective study. All articles published in the print version of Radiology from January 2021 to December 2022 were reviewed; editorials and case reports were excluded. Articles featured on Radiology podcasts were included in the podcast group. Articles published within the same journal issue and category were the nonpodcast group. Downloads, Google Scholar citations, Dimensions citations, and AAS metrics were recorded. The Mann-Whitney U test was used to compare medians and evaluate differences between older and more recently published articles. Results The podcast group, composed of 88 articles, exhibited significantly higher median values for downloads (PG, 4521.0; nonpodcast group, 2123.0; P < .001), Google Scholar citations (podcast group, 14.5; nonpodcast group, 10.0; P = .01), Dimensions citations (podcast group, 12.0; nonpodcast group, 9.0; P = .01), and AAS (podcast group, 43.0; nonpodcast group, 10.0; P < .001) compared with the nonpodcast group of 378 articles. Within both groups, articles published in the earlier nonpodcast group (January to June 2021) had higher downloads (podcast group, P = .08; nonpodcast group, P < .001), Google Scholar citations (podcast group and nonpodcast group, P < .001), and Dimension citations (podcast group and nonpodcast group, P < .001) than articles from the later period (July to December 2022). AAS markedly increased in recent podcast articles (P = .03), but AAS for nonpodcast articles significantly decreased over time (P = .01). Conclusion Radiology articles featured on the Radiology podcast had greater median metrics, including downloads, Google Scholar citations, Dimensions citations, and AAS, compared with nonpodcast articles, suggesting that podcasts can be an effective method of disseminating and amplifying research within the field of radiology. © RSNA, 2024 See also the editorial by Chu and Nicola in this issue.

An Interactive Scholarly Collaborative Network Based on Academic Relationships and Research Collaborations

In this era of digital transformation, when the amount of scholarly literature is rapidly growing, hundreds of papers are published online daily with regard to different fields, especially in relation to academic subjects. Therefore, it difficult to find an expert/author to collaborate with from a specific research area. This is thought to be one of the most challenging activities in academia, and few people have considered authors’ multi-factors as an enhanced method to find potential collaborators or to identify the expert among them; consequently, this research aims to propose a novel model to improve the process of recommending authors. This is based on the authors’ similarity measurements by extracting their explicit and implicit topics of interest from their academic literature. The proposed model mainly consists of three factors: author-selected keywords, the extraction of a topic’s distribution from their publications, and their publication-based statistics. Furthermore, an enhanced approach for identifying expert authors by extracting evidence of expertise has been proposed based on the topic-modeling principle. Subsequently, an interactive network has been constructed that represents the predicted authors’ collaborative relationship, including the top-k potential collaborators for each individual. Three experiments have been conducted on the collected data; they demonstrated that the most influential factor for accurately recommending a collaborator was the topic’s distribution, which had an accuracy rate of 88.4%. Future work could involve building a heterogeneous co-collaboration network that includes both the authors with their affiliations and computing their similarities. In addition, the recommendations would be improved if potential and real collaborations were combined in a single network.

Analysis of global inequality in research outcome using the Gini coefficient

Purpose

This study attempts to prove the extent of the gaps in the academic ecosystem by using the Gini coefficient.

Design/methodology/approach

This study measures the gap between research document volume and citation by country and academic field using the latest ten years of research data of the Web of Science.

Findings

As a result, there is a large volume of documents in the USA and China, and the gap between global countries is g = 0.88 with high inequality. The fields of arts and humanities and social sciences are led by British and American cultures, and the gap between countries (g = 0.91, 0.89) is larger than in other fields. In the meantime, there is also inequality (g = 0.40) about the volumes of research documents between six academic fields, and the gap between the average numbers of citations per publication is the highest in social science (g = 0.80) and the lowest in life science (g = 0.71).

Originality/value

This study proves the extent of the gaps in the academic ecosystem by using the Gini coefficient with large amount research data.

Funding of Radiology Research: Frequency and Association With Citation Rate

OBJECTIVE. The purpose of this study is to investigate the frequency of funded research published in major radiology journals and to determine whether funding is associated with the article citation rate. MATERIALS AND METHODS. A total of 600 consecutive original research articles published in three journals-AJR, Radiology, and European Radiology-were included. Linear regression analysis was performed to determine the association between research funding and the article citation rate, as adjusted for journal, continent of origin of the first author, subspecialty, study findings included in the article title, number of authors, immediate open access publication, and time since publication online. RESULTS. Funding was declared for 286 of 600 included articles (47.7%). Sources of funding were as follows: federal sponsorship (29.4%), a nonprofit foundation (16.4%), both federal sponsorship and a nonprofit foundation (16.1%), private industry (10.1%), intramural institutional research funding (9.8%), and other funding sources (18.2%). Articles with first authors whose continent of origin was Europe (p < 0.001), vascular and interventional radiology articles (p < 0.001), and articles published in AJR (p < 0.001) were significantly more frequently unfunded than funded. Articles published in Radiology were significantly more frequently funded (p < 0.001). The citation rate was not significantly different between funded and unfunded articles (p = 0.166). In adjusted linear regression analysis, funding was not significantly associated with the citation rate (β coefficient, -0.31; 95% CI, -3.27 to 2.66; p = 0.838). CONCLUSION. Almost half of the research articles published in major radiology journals declared funding, a proportion that has increased compared with findings from previous studies (17% of articles in a study from 1994 and 26.9% of articles in a study of literature published between 2001 and 2010). Most funded articles received support from federal sponsors or nonprofit foundations, whereas only a minority of funded articles were supported by private industry. Funding was not associated with a higher citation rate.

Radiological Clinical Practice Guidelines Published in the Last Decade: A Bibliometric Analysis

Objectives:

To provide a comprehensive review of radiological clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) and to establish their characteristics and impact in the field of radiology.

Material and Methods:

A MEDLINE search was performed for CPGs in which at least half of the authors were from the radiology or imaging department. The following information was extracted from each CPG: year of publication, journal, provider, number of authors, number of pages, number of references, collaboration, country of origin, radiological subspecialty, imaging modality used, topic, source of funding, and number and pattern of citations.

Results:

In total, 120 radiological CPGs published between July 2006 and June 2016 were identified. One hundred nine (90.8%) radiological CPGs were published in radiology journals, 96 (80.0%) were provided by the scientific community, 108 (90.0%) were collaborative studies, 64 (53.3%) originated from the United States, 36 (30.0%) were concerned with the field of vascular/interventional radiology, 38 (31.7%) used combined imaging techniques, 52 (43.3%) were focused on interpretation and management, and 118 (98.4%) were not funded. Radiological CPGs included a median of 8 authors, 9 pages, and 49 references. The median number of citations and annual citations were 18 (range, 0–540) and 3.5 (range, 0–75.6), respectively.

Conclusion:

Our study presents several interesting insights into the characteristics and impact of radiological CPGs.