Authorship pattern and Degree of collaboration in the field of Diabetes Research output in India: A Scientometric analysis

Mahendra Kumar Patel¹, Maya Verma²

¹SoS in Library and Information Science, Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University, Raipur (C.G) 492010

¹mahendra23kumar@gmail.com, ²verma_maya64@rediffmail.com 

Abstract:

Diabetes is one of the most prevalent diseases in India and has been a major cause of concern for many years. It is important to measure the author productivity of diabetes research in India. This paper will explore the trends in author productivity related to diabetes research in India over the past few years. This study focused on analyzing Diabetic research published via Web of Science (2018-2020). The results show that a total of 9185 papers were published. The year 2017 had the greatest number of publications, with 745 total documents. The analysis reveals that Journal articles constituted 8577 (93.381%) of total documents of source, followed by Website 406 (4.420%), Books 151 (1.644%), and respectively. Among all authors, V Mohan has published 164 outputs from Madras Diabetes Research Foundation, Chennai, followed by A Misra with 89 outputs in the field of diabetes research. The degree of collaboration is found to be 0.918 from 1938 to 2020 and found multiauthor dominating. The result of this study found that Indian authors contributed more articles on diabetes research and should be encouraged to contribute further works in this field.

Keywords: Diabetes, Scientometric, Authorship pattern, Author Productivity, Publication, Degree of collaboration, Web of Science, etc.

1.     Introduction

Diabetes is a condition that impairs the body’s ability to process blood glucose, otherwise known as blood sugar. There are several types of diabetes, which have various treatments. Without ongoing, careful management, diabetes can lead to a buildup of sugars in the blood, which can increase the risk of dangerous complications, including stroke and heart disease. Different kinds of diabetes can occur, and how people manage the condition depends on the type. Not all forms of diabetes stem from a person being overweight or leading an inactive lifestyle. Some are present from childhood.

The most common types of diabetes include type 1, type 2, and gestational diabetes, which we cover in more detail below. Less common types of diabetes include monogenic diabetes and cystic fibrosis-related diabetes.(Diabetes: Symptoms, Treatment, Prevention, and Early Diagnosis)

An estimated 30.3 million people in the United States, or 9.4 percent of the population, have diabetes. About one in four people with diabetes don't know they have the disease. An estimated 84.1 million Americans aged 18 years or older have prediabetes.(Patel and Verma)

Scientometrics and bibliometrics are methodological approaches in which the scientific literature itself becomes the subject of analysis. In a sense, they could be considered a science of science. Scientometrics researchers often attempt to measure the evolution of a scientific domain, the impact of scholarly publications, the patterns of authorship, and the process of scientific knowledge production. Scientometrics and bibliometrics often involve the monitoring of research, the assessment of the scientific contribution of authors, journals, or specific works, as well as the analysis of the dissemination process of scientific knowledge. (What Are Scientometrics and Bibliometrics? - Provalis Research)

Modern scientometrics is mostly based on the work of Derek J. de Solla Price and Eugene Garfield. The latter created the Science Citation Index and founded the Institute for Scientific Information which is heavily used for scientometric analysis. A dedicated academic journal, Scientometrics, was established in 1978. The industrialization of science increased the quantity of publications and research outcomes and the rise of the computers allowed effective analysis of this data. While the sociology of science focused on the behavior of scientists, scientometrics focused on the analysis of publications. Accordingly, scientometrics is also referred to as the scientific and empirical study of science and its outcomes. (Short Note on Scientometrics | Research Methodology | Library and Information Science)

2.     Review of Literature

Nasrin Poly Tahmina, Mohaimenul Islam Md, et al. (2023) conducted a bibliometric analysis of artificial intelligence (AI) research related to diabetic retinopathy (DR) between 2012 and 2022. The analysis includes information on the growth rate of publications, top countries, journals, institutes, and authors, as well as the co-occurrence of keywords and reference co-citation analysis. The study analyzed a total of 931 articles on artificial intelligence (AI) for diabetic retinopathy (DR) published between 2012 and 2022. The top 10 most productive authors in AI research for DR were identified, with Ting D. ranking first among all authors. The top 10 countries in terms of publication output were the People's Republic of China, India, USA, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and Italy. Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, IEEE Access, and Computers in Biology and Medicine were the top contributing journals in this field. The number of publications in this field has been steadily increasing, with a significant growth rate observed in recent years.(Poly et al.)

Patel, Sina, and Khedkar, Vijayshri Nitin (2021) examine the trend in publications, authors, countries, and institutions from Scopus and Web of Science databases to develop a global picture of diabetes prediction research nationally and internationally. The analysis was enhanced further by checking network indicators such as co-authorship, collaborative countries, citation analysis, and keyword occurrence. (Khedkar and Patel)

Oliveira, Patricia Simplicio, et al. (2020) evaluated a bibliometric study using a sample of 85 articles published in Scielo, Lilacs, Medline, and Scopus. The articles were mainly published in international journals, including the Diabetes Educator Journal and national journals, distributed to nurse researchers. Of 51 (67.1%) authors, 51 are nurses, 53 are doctors, and 78 (91.8%) studies are original. Brazil had the most significant number of studies, 33 (39.1%).(Oliveira et al.)

Rondan, Alvaro Taype, et al. (2017) analyze the scientific production related to diabetes in Peru between 1996 and 2015. From 1996 to 2015, papers about diabetes published in the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS) and Scopus databases were identified by Peruvian authors. The results indicated that 75.3% of the 81 articles were original articles, no intervention was evaluated, foreign sources funded 60.7% of the articles, 55.6% had an author associated with the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (UPCH), 65.4% had a foreign author.(Taype-Rondan et al.)

Varadarajulu, Rachel, et al. (2013) studies the research productivity regarding psychosocial aspects of diabetes from India. Using the terms 'psychosocial', 'diabetes' in any field, and 'India' in the author affiliation field, a search had carried out in PUBMED online database. There are 16 articles available in PubMed related to the psychosocial impact of diabetes, constituting only 0.08% of all articles in the database. There were primarily original articles (13 out of 16), and the remainder was a case report, review, and medical hypothesis. Most of the articles had made by authors from Delhi, Chennai, and Visakhapatnam. (Varadarajulu et al.)

3.     Objectives

The specific studies of the objectives are:

1.     To find out the year-wise distribution in diabetes research.

2.     To find out the document-wise distribution of diabetes literature.

3.     To find out the authorship pattern of publication.

4.     To find out the degree of collaboration.

5.     To find out the prolific author in diabetes research.

4.     Methodology

The scientometric analysis was carried out to identify the research productivity of diabetes in India. The data was retrieved from the Web of Science database from 2018 to 2020. The references from the articles have taken for analysis. For collecting data, the search term "Diabetes" is used and country and year filters are applied (ALL FIELD-KEY “DIABETES”, PUB. COUNTRY- INDIA, PUB. YEAR- 2018-2020). There are 9185 records in total, which have been collected, imported into MS-Office and Excel, analyzed, and presented in table and chart format. Author productivity and Degree of collaboration have also been calculated.

5.     Data Analysis and Interpretation

5.1  Year-wise distribution of diabetes research

Table No-01: Year-wise distribution

Table no-01 and figure no-01 show that year-wise distribution of publication of diabetes research output from 1938 to 2020, a total of 9185 were published. The highest number of publications, 745 (8.111%), were published in 2017, followed by 2016, i.e., 664 (7.229%) publications. The 2018 were 640 (6.968%) followed by 2015 i.e., 637 (6.935%) publications. The lowest publication number was in 1938, i.e., 1 (0.011%). The study reveals the highest number of articles published in 2017, i.e., 745 (7.229%).

5.2  Document-wise distribution of publications

Table No-02: Document-wise distribution

Table no-01 and figure no-01 show the document-wise distribution of publications, including Journal articles, Websites, Books, Conference Proceedings, Reports, News, Reviews, Thesis, dictionaries, Encyclopedia, E-book, magazines, and Databases. The analysis found that 8577 publications based on the Web of Science revealed that journal articles occupy the predominant position sharing 93.381%. The other source is website 406 (4.420%), followed by books 151 (1.644%), conference proceedings 16 (0.174%), and followed by other sources of publications.

5.3 Authorship pattern of publication

Table No-03:  Authorship pattern

Table no-03 and figure no-03 show the authorship pattern of publication. The analysis found that multiple authors contribute more publications than a single author. Multiple authors contribute 6991 (69.850%) publications followed by Three authors contribute 910 (10.610%), Two authors 887 (10.342%) and the least number of contributions is by Single author, i.e., 535 (6.238%) publications.

5.4 Degree of Collaboration

Various methods have been the degree methods proposed to calculate the degree of research collaboration. Here in this study the formula proposed by Subramanyam (1983) has been used.(Khaparde Professor and Pawar)

The degree of collaboration C = Nm

                                                  Ns+ Nm

Where, C = Degree of collaboration in a discipline

 Nm = number of multi authored papers in the discipline

 Ns = number of single papers in the discipline

Here,   Nm = 5991

            Ns   = 535

            C = 5991         = 0.918

                5991+535

Thus, the degree of collaboration (C) from 1938 to 2020 is 0.918.

Year wise degree of collaboration

Thus, the level of collaboration in diabetes publications during the study with 0.918, it dominates multi-authored contributions. The analysis shows that the degree of collaboration in 2019 was very high at 0.969, but it was lower in the previous year 1974 with the value 0.5.

5.5 Productive of top 10 authors in Diabetes Research

Table No-04:  Top 10 most productive authors.

Table no-04 reveals the productivity of authors by analyzing the diabetes publications in Indian levels. It indicates the number of works done by authors. The top contributor in Diabetes literature was V Mohan, who published 164 articles. The second major contributor was A Misra, who published 89 articles, followed by R M Anjana, who published 88 articles on Diabetes literature. R M Pandey published the least number of articles with 20 articles.

6.     Findings

1.     The result shows that a maximum number of publications in diabetes research were recorded in 2017 with 745 outputs, followed by 2016 with 664 outputs and the least number of outputs in many years.

2.     The analysis reveals that Multiple authors 5991 (69.850%) contribute more publications than single author 535 (6.238%).

3.     The degree of collaboration (C) from 1938 to 2020 is 0.918.

4.     The result showed that 'Journal article' has constituted 8577 (93.381%) of total documents of source, followed by Website 406 (4.420%), Books 151 (1.644%), Conference Proceeding 16 (0.174%) and least number of documents with other sources.

5.     In diabetes research, V Mohan has published 164 outputs from Madras Diabetes Research Foundation, Chennai, followed by A Misra with 89 outputs.

7.     Conclusion

In this study, the literature on ‘Diabetes’ research in India has been analyzed by Scientometric analysis from 2018-2020. During this period, the growth of publications has increased. The highest number of publications was produced in the year 2017 with 745 outputs. Multiple authors vs single authors were analyzed and found that multiple authors contribute a maximum number of publications. The most productive author is V Mohan with 164 outputs from India relating to diabetes research. The result found that journal article is the main and topmost source in the field of diabetes research. It is crucial to encourage more publications on diabetes. This could be done by providing grants and rewards to academics performing sociological research that examines trends in diabetes. As a result, it would be easier to raise awareness about diabetes and how to manage it. Collaboration between academic institutions and healthcare organizations can facilitate resource sharing.

Reference:

Diabetes: Symptoms, Treatment, Prevention, and Early Diagnosis. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323627. Accessed 5 Mar. 2022.

Khaparde Professor, Vaishali, and Shubhangi Pawar. “Authorship Pattern and Degree of Collaboration in Information Technology.” Journal of Computer Science & Information Technology, vol. 1, no. 1, 2013, pp. 46–54.

Khedkar, Vijayshri Nitin, and Sina Patel. Diabetes Prediction Using Machine Learning : A Bibliometric Analysis DigitalCommons @ University of Nebraska - Lincoln Diabetes Prediction Using Machine Learning : A Bibliometric Analysis. no. January, 2021.

Oliveira, Patrícia Simplício, et al. “Self Care in Diabetes Mellitus: Bibliometric Study.” Enfermeria Global, vol. 16, no. 1, 2017, pp. 670–88, https://doi.org/10.6018/eglobal.16.1.249911.

Patel, Mahendra Kumar, and Maya Verma. “Analysis of Diabetes Research Literature in India during 2019: A Scientometric Study.” Journal of Ravishankar University, vol. 25, no. 1, July 2019, pp. 01–09, https://doi.org/10.52228/JRUA.2019-25-1-1.

Poly, Tahmina Nasrin, et al. “Artificial Intelligence in Diabetic Retinopathy: Bibliometric Analysis.” Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine, vol. 231, Apr. 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmpb.2023.107358.

Short Note on Scientometrics | Research Methodology | Library and Information Science. https://www.lispower.in/2021/06/short-note-on-scientometrics-research.html. Accessed 28 Feb. 2022.

Taype-Rondan, Alvaro, et al. “Scientific Production in Diabetes in Peru: A Bibliometric Study.” Scientific Production in Diabetes in Peru: A Bibliometric Study, vol. 44, no. 2, 2017, pp. 153–60, https://doi.org/10.4067/S0717-75182017000200006.

Varadarajulu, Rachel, et al. “Research Productivity Regarding Psychosocial Aspects of Diabetes from India.” Journal of Social Health and Diabetes, vol. 01, no. 02, 2013, pp. 082–85, https://doi.org/10.4103/2321-0656.115305.

What Are Scientometrics and Bibliometrics? - Provalis Research. https://provalisresearch.com/solutions-2/applications/scientometrics-bibliometrics-software/. Accessed 14 Feb. 2022.