1. Bibliometric Analysis of Stroke Research in Taiwan
Yee-Shuan Lee1 *, Hsiao-Lei Lin2, Wen-Ta Chiu2 and Yuh-Shan Ho1#
1Bibliometric Centre, Taipei Medical University - Wan-Fang Hospital
2Taipei Medical University - Wan-Fang Hospital
3School of Public Health, Taipei Medical University
Introduction
Research performance evaluation is growing in commends to determine its quality or impact and is especially important for the funding councils. Scientists often communicate through publication hence publication output may indicate research output and hence becomes the base for popular evaluation methods. International collaborations have become essential in modern science (Katz, 1997; Vogel, 1997) and contribute to rise of publication output and enhance research quality (Avkiran, 1997).
This study analyzed the trend of stroke research output in Taiwan from 1981 to 2001 based on yearly paper production in relevance to the whole world. The collaboration patterns were observed to determine its impact level by citation frequency.
Figure 1. World and Taiwan Article Output from 1991 to 2001
Methodology
SCI documents from 1991 to 2001 with:
“Taiwan” as the address
“Stroke” as keyword in title, abstract, or keyword
Only articles were analyzed (94.5% of Taiwan documents were articles)
Analysis parameter:
National collaboration: address from more than one institutes in Taiwan
International collaboration: include researchers abroad
Citation per publication (CPP): total citation/total publication
Figure 2. Relationship between Collaboration and Paper Output
Results
Publication Output
Article output increased steadily each year for both Taiwan and world (Figure 1) and denoted the extraordinary growth in stroke research. The overall article production of Taiwan has shown similar growth pattern as the world. Taiwan article output did not increase as stably but instead decreased 23% a year prior to an abrupt increase in 1999.
Collaboration
Comparing collaboration rate in 1992 to 2001, independent work has declined from 66% to 22%. National and international collaborations have grown from 26% and 8% to 55% and 17% respectively. Corresponded the total paper output with collaboration style in Figure 2, The number of collaboration was directly proportioned to the total paper production after 1991, especially national collaboration.
14.3% of all articles were international collaborated. The CPP of international collaboration each year was higher than the other two types of collaborations (Figure 3) dented higher impact than other types of collaboration throughout the year. United States was the most frequent partners who composed 73% of the production followed by 9 other countries. The international partners were geographic distributed as North America with 76%, Europe with 10%, Asia with 9%, and Australia with 5%.
Figure 3. CPP of Each Collaboration Type
Conclusion
Stroke research in Taiwan has stretched out from independent work to collaboration that immediately brought up the paper production by about 30% from 1991 to The collaboration has not only raised the paper output but also been able to aid in publishing to journals abroad. The overall performance of Taiwan’s stroke research indicated that it has definitely caught on to the world trend.
Reference
Vogel, E.E. (1996), Impact factor and international collaboration in Chilean physics: Scientometrics, 38,
Avkiran, N.K. (1997), Scientific collaboration in finance does not lead to better quality research. Scientometrics, 39,
Katz, J.S. and Hicks, D. (1997), How much is a collaboration worth? A calibrated bibliometric model. Scientometrics, 40,