Analysis of Top ten-Cited Articles Published in the Journal of Indian Association of Pediatric Surgeons Over a 10-Year Period.

AIM: The objective was to identify, analyze, and categorize the characteristics (the type of article, country of origin, institution, authorship, topic, and the number of citations) of the articles published in the Journal of Indian Association of Pediatric Surgeons (JIAPS) from 2008 to 2017, with particular focus on the top ten-cited articles.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: The above characteristics of the individual articles were tabulated in the Microsoft Excel® sheet. The number of citations of an article was obtained from three databases (CrosssRef, MEDLINE, and Google Scholar). A final tally was obtained after removing common entries in the databases.
RESULTS: The total number of articles published was 613. There were 255 case reports, 209 original articles and review articles, and 149 brief communications. The top five countries of origin of the articles were India, United Kingdom (UK), Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, with 526, 14, 9, 7, and 6 articles, respectively. The institution, authorship, and topics of the top ten-cited articles were noted.
CONCLUSION: Case reports are the most common type of articles published in JIAPS. Most of the articles originated from India, followed by the UK and middle-east countries. This analysis may provide insights to the editorial board and the members of IAPS about the trend of research and publications among the pediatric surgeons of India. Copyright:

INTRODUCTION

Bibliometrics is the quantitative analysis and statistics to published material such as books, journal articles, and their accompanying citation counts. Bibliometric analysis is one of several ways to analyze and rate the research output of researchers and to assess the impact of a journal. The citation count received by a particular article is one of the indicators of its influence within its user base. The website of the Journal of Indian Association of Pediatric Surgeons (JIAPS) does have the statistics of the most cited articles, which is based on a single database maintained by “CrossRef.” On scrutinizing the top articles, it was found to be underestimating the number of citations of the articles by a considerable margin when compared with another accessible database, that is, “Google Scholar.”

With this backdrop, we aimed to identify, analyze, and categorize the essential characteristics of the articles published in JIAPS from 2008 to 2017, with particular focus on the top ten-cited articles using a more extensive database.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

All the articles published from 2008 to 2017 were tabulated into a Microsoft Excel® sheet. The type of article, country of origin, institutions, topic, and number of citations were noted. For the kind of article, the following categories were used:

Original articles and review articles

Case reports

Brief communications (presidential address, editorial comments, letter to the editor, images in practice, how we do it, obituary, and book review).

The number of citations of an article was obtained from three databases: “CrossRef,” “MEDLINE,” and “Google Scholar.” All the data were collected over 24 h. A final tally was obtained by adding all the citations in the three databases after removing the common entries.

RESULTS

The total number of articles published was 613. There were 255 case reports (41.5%), 209 original articles and review articles (34.1%), and 149 (24.3%) brief communications [Figure 1].

Figure 1

Type of articles and their distribution

The top five countries (out of total 30 countries) as far as the origin of the articles are concerned were from India, United Kingdom (UK), Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia with 526, 14, 9, 7, and 6 articles, respectively [Table 1]. Among the countries other than India, UK has the highest contribution with 14 articles. There were 13 countries from around the world from which there was a single article in the journal.

Table 1

The number of articles with their respective country of origin during the period

Country	No. of articles, country wise (%)
India	526 (85.8)
UK	14 (2.2)
Turkey	9 (1.4)
Iran	7 (1.1)
Saudi Arabia	6 (0.9)
Pakistan, USA	5 (0.8)
Malaysia, Greece	4 (0.6)
Germany, Australia, Japan, Senegal	3 (0.4)
Egypt, Brazil, Italy, Tunisia	2 (0.3)
China, Bangladesh, UAE, Ireland, Jordan, Malawi, Nigeria, Oman, Poland, Sri Lanka, Spain, Thailand, Iraq	1 (0.1)

The 613 articles originated from a total of 208 institutions. The top ten contributors are tabulated in Table 2. Besides, 119 institutions had at least one publication in the JIAPS during this period.

Table 2

The institution-wise contribution to the Journal of Indian Association of Pediatric Surgeons during the period

Institute	Number of articles
AIIMS, Delhi	58
PGIMER, Chandigarh	50
Lady Hardinge Medical College, Delhi	19
N.R.S. Medical College, Kolkata	15
Christian Medical College, Vellore, IMS, BHU, Varanasi and Maulana Azad Medical College, Delhi	13
King George Medical College, Lucknow	12
Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, Srinagar	10
Institute of Post-Graduate Medical Education and Research and Seth Sukhlal Karnani Memorial Hospital, Kolkata, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi, and Narayana Health, Bengaluru	9
PSG Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, Coimbatore	8
King Edward Memorial Hospital and Indira Gandhi Institute of Child Health	7

AIIMS: All India Institute of Medical Sciences, PGIMER: Post-Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, NRS: Nil Ratan Sircar, IMS-BHU: Institute of Medical Sciences- Banaras Hindu University, PSG: P.S.Govindaswamy

The top ten-cited across all article types published during the period are tabulated in Table 3. The top ten-cited articles received a total of 438 citations until August 2019. All these articles were published between 2009 and 2015. The top article was cited 84 times, and the 10th article was cited 32 times. Of the ten articles, four were original articles, four were review articles, whereas the remaining two were case reports [Table 3].

Table 3

The top-ten cited articles in Journal of Indian Association of Pediatric Surgeons during the period

Title	Country of origin	Institute	Authors	Type of article	Year of publication	Citations (as on August 2019)
Management of Wilms’ tumor: NWTS versus SIOP	India	Bai Jerbai Wadia Hospital for Children	Bhatnagar[1]	Review	2009	84
The treatment of hepatoblastoma: Its evolution and the current status as per the SIOPEL trials	Malawi	Queen Elisabeth Central Hospital	Aronson et al.[2]	Review	2014	49
Psychological issues in cleft lip and cleft palate	India	Consultant Psychiatrist, Mumbai	Sousa et al.[3]	Review	2009	49
Perforation into gut by ventriculoperitoneal shunts: A report of two cases and review of the literature	India	JNMC Hospital, Aligarh	Hai et al.[4]	Case report	2011	42
Crossed fused renal ectopia: Challenges in diagnosis and management	India	AIIMS, Delhi	Solanki et al.[5]	Original	2013	41
Anorectal malformations	India	BHU, Varanasi	Gangopadhyay and Pandey[6]	Review	2015	38
Epidemiological trends of pediatric trauma: A single-center study of 791 patients	India	MGMMC and Hospital, Indore	Sharma et al.[7]	Original	2011	37
Vaginal agenesis: Experience with sigmoid colon neovaginoplasty	India	CSMMU, Lucknow	Rawat et al.[8]	Original	2010	34
Soft-tissue covers in hypospadias surgery: Is tunica vaginalis better than dartos flap?	India	MAMC, Delhi	Dhua et al.[9]	Original	2012	32
Beware of neonatal appendicitis	India	PGIMER Chandigarh	Khan et al.[10]	Case report	2010	32

J. N. Medical College Hospital: Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, AIIMS: All India Institute of Medical Science, BHU: Banaras Hindu University, MGMMC and MY Hospital: Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College, CSMMU: Chhatrapati Shahuji Maharaj Medical University: MAMC: Maulana Azad Medical College, PGI: Post-graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research

DISCUSSION

Twenty-four years after its creation, JIAPS now firmly established journal in the field of pediatric surgery in India.[1] After almost a decade of being indexed in PubMed in 2009, our analysis reveals that there is a marginal improvement in the type of published articles in JIAPS. Our study shows that original and review articles comprise 34% of JIAPS's published material during the period analyzed as compared to 20% in 2009.[11] When we compared the original and review articles in a leading pediatric surgery journal, Pediatric Surgery International (PSI) with JIAPS, the difference was found to be significant (97% in PSI vs. 34% in JIAPS). Our findings indicate that JIAPS is in a steady path of improvement as far as the proportion of original articles is concerned, but it has to be stepped up to reach the international standards.

As far as the country of origin of articles is concerned, it is understandable that the majority of the articles would have been from institutions in India (96%), being the official journal of pediatric surgeons in India. An important observation was that there were 25 countries where the native or official language is not English, contributed a total of 65 articles (10%). The five countries that were considered to be having English as their native or official language were India, the UK, the USA, Australia, and Ireland. It is a small but significant fraction indicating that the popularity of JIAPS is not restricted to the English-speaking countries.

The institution-wise rankings based on the contribution of articles to JIAPS was not available before. We observed that all the institutes among the top ten contributors were from India. Two leading teaching institutes from India topped the charts and contributed a total of 108 (17.6%) of all the articles. There was representation from almost all the states, and this endorses the fact that JIAPS has a strong foothold as far as Indian pediatric surgeons are concerned. There is a caveat to this institutional ranking. One must not extrapolate these rankings and make a judgment about the research capabilities and output based on these findings alone. It must be understood that JIAPS is not the only journal where the research articles are submitted for publication. There are other pediatric surgery and subspecialty journals, where the authors must be submitting their research work. Hence, these findings are not broad-based inferences on the research output of these institutes but restricted to JIAPS only.

There are various databases from which bibliometric data of an article may be obtained. Some of the widely used resources are the “Web of Science” by Thomson Reuters, “CrossRef,” and “Google Scholar.” Each one of these has different catchment areas, and it has been found that the number of citations that they reveal at any particular moment for a specific article can vary.[12] The user base also varies as “Google Scholar” is a free resource in contrast to the “Web of Science” which is a paid service. “Google Scholar” citation count may also be higher since it incorporates citations beyond peer-reviewed articles and may include books and nontraditional sources, such as websites, dissertations, and open-access online journals.[12] Hence, it can be assumed that citation count obtained from “Google Scholar” might come very close to reality than the other sources.

JIAPS is not enlisted in the “Web of Science” database. JIAPS's website has direct links to “CrossRef” and “MEDLINE®” that provide the bibliometric data for its articles. As of now, there was no comprehensive list of the most frequently cited articles in JIAPS, especially that after indexing the PubMed in 2009. Our attempt to get a snapshot image of the citation count of the articles in JIAPS revealed a few interesting findings as far as our study parameters are concerned.

Eight of the top ten-cited articles are either review articles or original articles [Table 3]. This is important since review articles on contemporary topics and original articles on thrust areas of research are more likely to be cited again and again. The topics in the top-cited articles were on pediatric oncology (S.No. 1 and 2), those which required multidisciplinary management such as cleft lip/palate (S.No. 3), congenital anomalies and neonatal surgery (S.No. 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10), pediatric trauma (S.No. 7), and pediatric urology (S.No. 9). The management of congenital anomalies and neonatal surgeries has made rapid strides, and management of these has been the pediatric surgeon's domain. We observed that five articles among the top ten-cited articles in JIAPS are on this subject, and this restresses that neonatal surgery is our forte.

Our observations on citation analysis have shown essential insights into what it takes to become cited. Articles on thrust areas of research and those that have a long-standing effect in the practice and research of pediatric surgery are the ones that gather the most citations. To become meaningful, this kind of analysis may be repeated in predetermined intervals to project a trend rather than just a snapshot.

Our study has certain limitations, and they must be kept in mind by the readers. This attempt by the authors was to provide a glimpse and snapshot of citation analysis of our association's official journal. The effect of duration of time elapsed after publication can affect the number of citations a particular article receives. A freshly published article on a vital topic may gather many citations in time to come than when analyzed soon after publication. This factor has been taken care of to a certain extent by analyzing only those articles that were published until 2017.

CONCLUSION

This was the first attempt to analyze the articles published in JIAPS on various parameters, including the citation count. This information would be of value to authors to choose their prospective research work to create a long-lasting impact on the research in pediatric surgery. For the editorial team, it provides insight into the kind of articles that are of interest to the readers of JIAPS, and this would help develop tangential ideas to further improve penetrance and the quality of the journal in the long run.

Financial support and sponsorship

Nil.

Conflicts of interest

There are no conflicts of interest.