Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The use of bootstrapping method to compare research achievements for ophthalmology authors in the US since 2010

  • Published:
Scientometrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The h-index has its popularity in the global scientific community. Despite the h-index being used as an indicator of individual research achievement, two main disadvantages have not been solved: (1) all coauthors contributing equally to article bylines and (2) the integer nature of the h-index making it hard to differentiate the IRAs among entities. This article aims to evaluate the most cited authors, institutes, and the US states in ophthalmology since 2010 using a proposed hx-index. Authors who worked for departments of ophthalmology in the United States were selected for identifying their IRAs in Pubmed Central (PMC) since 2010. Using the PubMed search engine, we conducted an observational study of citation analyses in affiliated research institutes and the US states for all authors who worked for departments of ophthalmology since 2010. A total of 18,289 published articles from 46,121 authors related to ophthalmology from the 50 states were analyzed. The bootstrapping method was applied with an estimated 95% confidence interval (CI) to distinguish the differences in IRAs among states and institutes. The x-index and the Kano model were complemental to the h-index for identifying the IRA characteristics and rankings. A pyramid plot was used to illustrate the importance of the author-weighted scheme (AWS) used for evaluating IRAs in academics. The hx-index combined both advantages of h-/x-indexes was proposed to assess IRAs for each facility. A significant difference was identified by observing two bands of estimated 95% CIs that were not overlapped. Furthermore, we drew a choropleth map on Google Maps to visualize the differences of IRA among states. There is a significant rise over time in the number of publications. The top-ranking states in hx-index based on publications and citations were Massachusetts (42.28), California (39.24), and Pennsylvania (34.29). If only the top 100 authors were included for calculating the median hx-index in each state, the top three were California (6.45), Massachusetts (3.97). and New York (3.07), with no significant difference found using the bootstrapping method. The institute and author with the highest hx-index were Harvard Medical School (Massachusetts) and Robert N Weinreb (California), respectively. We demonstrated that Dr. Medeiros from California published 466 articles in PMC and used the example to elucidate the importance of AWS when IRAs were assessed. With an overall increase in publications in the field of ophthalmology, IRAs assessed by these (1) hx-index, (2)the bootstrapping method, and (3) AWS should be synergically and complementarily combined together to evaluate author/institute IRA in the future.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5

Similar content being viewed by others

Availability of data and materials

All data used in this study is available in Additional File files.

Abbreviations

AAC:

Absolute advantage coefficient

AWS:

Authorship-weighted scheme

GHO:

Global Health Observatory

IC:

Interval confidence

IRA:

Individual research achievement

PMC:

Pubmed Center

SD:

Standard deviation

SE:

Standard error

VBA:

Visual basic for application

References

  • Bayramlar, H., Uslu, H., Bayramlar, O. F., & Karadag, R. (2019). Comparison of the h-indices of the editorial board members of seven ophthalmic subspecialty journals. Journal Francais d’Ophtalmologie, 42(4), 349–353.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, W. J. (2018). Dengue outbreaks and the geographic distribution of dengue vectors in Taiwan: a 20-year epidemiological analysis. Biomedical Journal, 41(5), 283–289.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chien, T. W. (2012). Cronbach’s alpha with the dimension coefficient to jointly Assess a Scale’s Quality. Rasch Measurement Transactions, 26(3), 1379.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chien, T. W., Chow, J. C., Chang, Y., & Chou, W. (2018). Applying Gini coefficient to evaluate the author research domains associated with the ordering of author names: A bibliometric study. Medicine (Baltimore), 97(39), e12418.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chien, T. W., Wang, H. Y., Hsu, C. F., & Kuo, S. C. (2019a). Choropleth map legend design for visualizing the most influential areas in article citation disparities: A bibliometric study. Medicine (Baltimore), 98(41), e17527.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chien, T. W., Wang, H. Y., & Lai, F. J. (2019b). Applying an author-weighted scheme to identify the most influential countries in research achievements on skin cancer: observational study. JMIR Dermatology, 2(1), 11015.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Doja, A., Eady, K., Horsley, T., Bould, M. D., Victor, J. C., & Sampson, M. (2014). The h-index in medical education: an analysis of medical education journal editorial boards. BMC Medical Education, 14, 251.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Efron, B. (1979). Bootstrap methods: Another look at the jackknife. The Annals of Statistics, 7(1), 1–26.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Fenner, T., Harris, M., Levene, M., & Bar-Ilan, J. (2018). A novel bibliometric index with a simple geometric interpretation. PLoS ONE, 13(7), e0200098.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, J. E. (2005). An index to quantify an individual’s scientific research output. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 102, 16569–16572. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0507655102.

    Article  MATH  Google Scholar 

  • Huang, M. H., & Chi, P. S. (2010). A comparative analysis of the application of h-index, g-index, and a-index in institutional-level research evaluation. Journal of Library and Information Studies, 8(2), 1–10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kan, W. C., Chou, W., Chien, T. W., Yeh, Y. T., & Chou, P. H. (2020). The most-cited authors who published papers in JMIR mHealth and uHealth using the authorship-weighted scheme: bibliometric analysis. JMIR Mhealth Uhealth, 8(5), e11567. https://doi.org/10.2196/11567.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kano, N., Seraku, N., Takahashi, F., & Tsuji, S. (1984). Attractive quality and must-be quality. Journal of the Japanese Society for Quality Control, 41, 39–48.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kung, S. C., Chien, T. W., Yeh, Y. T., Lin, J. J., & Chou, W. (2020). Using the bootstrapping method to verify whether hospital physicians have different h-indexes regarding individual research achievement: A bibliometric analysis. Medicine (Baltimore), 99(33), e21552. https://doi.org/10.1097/MD.0000000000021552.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lai, W. T., Chen, C. H., Hung, H., Chen, R. B., Shete, S., & Wu, C. C. (2018). Recognizing spatial and temporal clustering patterns of dengue outbreaks in Taiwan. BMC Infectious Diseases, 18(1), 256.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lee, J., Kristin, K. L., & Couldwell, W. T. (2009). Use of the h index in neurosurgery. Journal of Neurosurgery, 111, 387–392.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lin, C. H., Chou, P. H., Chou, W., & Chien, T. W. (2020). Using the Kano model to display the most cited authors and affiliated countries in schizophrenia research. Schizophrenia Research, 216, 422–428. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2019.10.058.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lindsey, D. (1982). Further evidence for adjusting for multiple authorship. Scientometrics, 4(5), 389–395.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mimouni, M., Zayit-Soudry, S., Segal, O., Barak, Y., Nemet, A. Y., Shulman, S., et al. (2016). Trends in authorship of articles in major ophthalmology journals by gender, 2002–2014. Ophthalmology, 123(8), 1824–1828.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Newman, M. E., & Gastner, M. T. (2004). Diffusion-based method for producing density-equalizing maps. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 101(20), 7499–7504.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Nowak, J. K., Lubarski, K., Kowalik, L. M., & Walkowiak, J. (2018). H-index in medicine is driven by original research. Croatian Medical Journal, 59(1), 25–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Panduro, A., Ojeda-Granados, C., Rivera, H., & Roman, S. (2015). h Index and scientific output of researchers in medicine from the University of Guadalajara, Mexico. Revista medica del Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, 53(6), 716–721.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pekel, E., & Pekel, G. (2016). Publication trends in corneal transplantation: a bibliometric analysis. BMC Ophthalmology, 16(1), 194.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Persson, O. (2019). Analyzing bibliographic data to visualize representations. https://homepage.univie.ac.at/juan.gorraiz/bibexcel/index.html%3ffbclid=IwAR0FCL3Tjjmx2XyUI_ZKxfv12DYTGhGsStmU-MKzOECxQ2kJEglfouO_2aQ?fbclid=IwAR2SMJF-pnZ7dRDXzy8VgqPW0fzMZ0CIyGDNmtVPtsnDVOABx7WqfHTgyNE Retrieved December 20, 2019.

  • Sekercioglu, C. H. (2008). Quantifying coauthor contributions. Science, 322(5900), 371.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sharma, B., Boet, S., Grantcharov, T., Shin, E., Barrowman, N. J., & Bould, M. D. (2011). The h-index outperforms other bibliometrics in the assessment of research performance in general surgery: A province-wide study. Surgery, 153, 493–501.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Soetens, L., Hahné, S., & Wallinga, J. (2017). Dot map cartograms for detection of infectious disease outbreaks: An application to Q fever, the Netherlands and pertussis, Germany. Eurosurveillance Weekly, 22(26), 30562.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vavryčuk, V. (2018). Fair ranking of researchers and research teams. PLoS ONE, 13(4), e0195509.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weinreb, R. N., Aung, T., & Medeiros, F. A. (2014). The pathophysiology and treatment of glaucoma: a review. JAMA, 311(18), 1901–1911.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • WHO. (2018). Schizophrenia Fact sheet. 2018/2/23 archived from the original reviewed April 2018 at http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs397/en/.

  • Wright, J. K. (1938). Problems in Population Mapping in Notes on statistical mapping, with special reference to the mapping of population phenomena. American Geographical Society; Washington, Population Association of America, NY, 1938. https://www.worldcat.org/title/notes-on-statistical-mapping-with-special-reference-to-the-mapping-of-population-phenomena/oclc/5160537/. Retrieved April 4, 2019.

  • Zhang, C. T. (2009). The e-index, complementing the h-index for excess citations. The e-index, complementing the h-index for excess citations. PLoS ONE, 4(5), e5429.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang, C. T. (2013). The h’-Index, effectively improving the h-index based on the citation distribution. PLoS ONE, 8(4), e59912.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, F., Shi, B., Liu, R., Zhou, W., Shi, D., & Zhang, J. (2018). Theme trends and knowledge structure on choroidal neovascularization: A quantitative and co-word analysis. BMC Ophthalmol., 18(1), 86.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank Enago (www.enago.tw) for the English language review of this manuscript.

Funding

There are no sources of funding to be declared.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Optometry, Chung Hwa University of Medical Technology, Jen-Teh, Tainan, Taiwan

    Shu-Chun Kuo

  2. Department of Ophthalmology, Chi-Mei Medical Center, 901 Chung Hwa Road, Yung Kung Dist, Tainan, 710, Taiwan

    Shu-Chun Kuo

  3. Medical School, St. George’s, University of London, London, UK

    Yu-Tsen Yeh

  4. Nephrology Department, Chi-Mei Medical Center, Tainan, Taiwan

    Wei-Chih Kan

  5. Department of Medical Research, Chi-Mei Medical Center, Tainan, Taiwan

    Tsair-Wei Chien

Authors
  1. Shu-Chun Kuo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Yu-Tsen Yeh
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Wei-Chih Kan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Tsair-Wei Chien
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

SC developed the study concept and design. YT, WC and SC analyzed and interpreted the data. TWC monitored the process of this study and helped in responding to the reviewers’ advice and comments. TWC drafted the manuscript, and all authors provided critical revisions for important intellectual content. The study was supervised by TWC. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shu-Chun Kuo.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethics approval and consent to participate

All data were downloaded from MEDLINE database at pubmed.com.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary material 1 (XLSX 4890 kb)

Supplementary material 2 (DOCX 14 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Kuo, SC., Yeh, YT., Kan, WC. et al. The use of bootstrapping method to compare research achievements for ophthalmology authors in the US since 2010. Scientometrics 126, 509–520 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03725-w

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-020-03725-w

Keywords

Search

Navigation