A Worldwide Assessment of Scientific Production in Urothelial Carcinoma Research Chi-Jung Chung1, Yu-Mei Hsueh2 and Yuh-Shan Ho3 1School of Public Health, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan 2Department of Public Health, School of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan 3Bibliometric Centre, Taipei Medical University - Wan-Fang Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan Introduction In Taiwan, Bladder cancer is the 7th and the 11th most commonly diagnosed malignancy for males and females respectively (9.46 vs. 4.00 per 100,000 people), with an estimated 1,807 new cases and a projected 587 deaths in 2001 (Department of Health ROC, 2001). The major risk factors for developing bladder cancer include age, sex, cigarette smoking, chronic arsenic exposure and occupational exposure to arylamines compounds. In this study, a bibliometric analysis based on the Science Citation Index (SCI) was carried out on urothelial carcinoma research published between 1995 and 2004. Methods Documents used in this study were based on the databases of the SCI which was accessed from the ISI Web of Science, Philadelphia, PA, USA. (Bladder or Transitional Cell or urothel*) and (Neoplasms or Carcinoma or cancer or tumor) were used as keywords to search titles, abstracts, or keywords. Results Table 2. Major characteristics of the research Figure 1. Annual publication output Table 3. Publication activity of top ten countries P: No. of articles; AU: No. of authors; PG: Total pages; NR: Cited reference count; SP: single country publications; CP: international collaborative publications Conclusions The yearly production has increased with the United States producing 38% the articles followed by Japan with a 12% contribution. Thirteen document types were found in the total of 20,509 documents obtained from 106 subject categories. The five most used author keywords were ‘bladder cancer’, ‘bladder neoplasms’, ‘bladder’, ‘transitional cell carcinoma’, and ‘immunohistochemistry’. Thirty-one percent of all articles were published in journals which listed in the category of urology & nephrology and 8.8% of all articles were published in Journal of Urology. The seven industrialized countries (U.S.A., Japan, Germany, U.K., France, Italy, and Canada) represent a share of 64% of world articles. The US was the most frequent partner accounting for comprising 24% of the international collaborative publications followed by Germany with 7.8%, and the UK 7.2%.