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How the European Union writes about ophthalmology

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Abstract

This study evaluates the distribution of papers published by European Union (EU) authors in ophthalmological journals from 1995 to 1997. The impact of ophthalmological research in the EU is compared with that produced in other countries and trends of research are highlighted through the keywords analysis. Data of articles published in ophthalmological journals (ISI Subject Category) were downloaded. Mean Impact Factor, source country population and gross domestic product were analyzed. A special purpose software for keyword elaboration was utilized. 11,219 papers were published in the world in the ophthalmological journals: 34.8% came from the EU (UK, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands ranking at the top) and 40.7% from the US. The mean Impact Factor of EU papers was 0.8 in comparison with 1.5 in the US. Despite the limitations of the existing methods, bibliometric findings are useful for the monitoring of research trends. The keywords analysis shows that the leading fields of research were retinal pathologies for diseases and keratoplasty for surgical procedures. It also suggests that keywords are overused, and urges minimization of this as well as standardization among journal editors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CilNews Group, Genova, Italy

    Donatella Ugolini, Marco Amedeo Cimmino, Cristina Casilli & Giuseppe Sandro Mela

  2. Dipartimento di Oncologia, Biologia e Genetica, Universita di Genova, Italy

    Donatella Ugolini

  3. Dipartimento di Medicina Interna e Specialita Mediche, Universita di Genova, Italy

    Marco Amedeo Cimmino & Giuseppe Sandro Mela

  4. Istituto Nazionale per la Ricerca sul Cancro, Genova, Italy

    Cristina Casilli

Authors
  1. Donatella Ugolini
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  2. Marco Amedeo Cimmino
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  3. Cristina Casilli
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  4. Giuseppe Sandro Mela
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Ugolini, D., Cimmino, M.A., Casilli, C. et al. How the European Union writes about ophthalmology. Scientometrics 52, 45–58 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012746927721

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1012746927721

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