Publication trends in the medical informatics literature: 20 years of 'Medical Informatics' in MeSH
2009

Trends in Medical Informatics Publications Over 20 Years

Sample size: 77023 publication Evidence: high

Author Information

Author(s): Jonathan P DeShazo, Donna L LaVallie, Fredric M Wolf

Primary Institution: University of Washington

Hypothesis

What are the major research areas of medical informatics and how have they changed over the years?

Conclusion

There is a steadily growing presence and increasing visibility of medical informatics literature over the years.

Supporting Evidence

  • 77,023 medical informatics articles were published during the 20-year period.
  • The average annual article publication growth rate was 12%.
  • The total number of unique journals over this twenty year period is 4,644.

Takeaway

This study looked at how many medical informatics articles have been published over 20 years and found that the number is growing a lot each year.

Methodology

A bibliometric analysis of medical informatics citations indexed in Medline was performed using publication trends, journal frequency, impact factors, MeSH term frequencies and characteristics of citations.

Potential Biases

The indexing of articles by MeSH terms is subjective, which may affect the classification of literature.

Limitations

The search strategy only employed the 'Medical Informatics' MeSH term and its descendents, potentially missing other relevant literature.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1186/1472-6947-9-7

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