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摘要
Background Research activities on Alzheimer's disease have increased enormously recently. A differentiation between publications of major and minor importance has become difficult even for experts. Scientometric data on developments and tendencies in Alzheimer's disease research were not available to date. The aim of this study was to evaluate the scientific efforts in Alzheimer's disease research.
Methods Large-scale data analyses, density-equalising algorithms and scientometric methods were used to evaluate the quantity and quality of research achievements of scientists studying Alzheimer's disease. Density-equalising algorithms were applied to data retrieved from ISI-Web.
Results From 1985 to 2008, 50030 publications on Alzheimer's disease were published and included in the database. Approximately 97% of the articles were written in English. The USA was identified as the most prolific country during that period, Canada and the UK were the most important cooperation partners followed by Germany and France, as well as other industrialised countries such as Japan and Australia.
Conclusion Our results indicate an increase in research activities after 1990 which can be explained by some important research results and an increasing importance in the media. The study results imply that currently established measures of research output (i.e., impact factor, h-index) should be evaluated critically because trends, such as self-citation and co-authorship, distort the results and limit their suitability as measures of research quality.
- 出版日期2010-6
