10.17843/rpmesp.2020.373.5470
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Bibliometric analysis of original scientific publications from the Instituto Nacional de Salud del Perú from 1998 to 2018
Franco Romaní
1,
Medical Doctor
ABSTRACT
Objetives: To measure the scientific production of the Instituto Nacional de Salud del Perú(INS) through bibliometric indicators of production, collaboration and impact.
Materials and methods: Bibliometric study of original publications from journals indexed in Scopus and Scielo Peru in the period between 1998 and 2018. The production indicators were: the number of publications per year and per subperiod (1998-2008 and 2009- 2018), by theme, and by journal. The collaboration indicators were: the co-authorship index, the number of institutional signatures, the national and international collaboration rate, the proportion of first-time authorship with INS affiliation. The impact indicators were: the number of citations per year, citation/document index, the proportion of documents ever cited and the citation speed.
Results: A total of 618 publications had at least one author with INS affiliation. From these, 55.9% (346/618) were published in Peruvian scientific journals and 30 INS authors were major producers. From the publications total, 49.0% (303/618) had a first author with INS affiliation. Regarding the subject of investigation, 132 (21.4%) publications were on vector-borne diseases; 9.7% (60), on tuberculosis; and 9.5% (59), on zoonoses. The international collaboration rate was 38.8%. The ratio of citations/documents was 12.8 for the entire period. The H index of publications with INS participation was 37.
Conclusions: In the last two decades, the contribution of the INS was focused on infectious diseases. On the other hand, it is required to strengthen the productivity indexes of INS authors, as well as consolidating the new thematic lines that they have developed in the last decade. This effort will allow the INS to improve its function as a public research institute.
Palabras clave: Bibliometría; Autoría y Coautoría en la Publicación Científica; Institutos de Investigación; Investigación; Indicador de Colaboración; Perú (Source: MeSH NLM).
INTRODUCTION
In recent decades, the scientific production of Peru’s research centers
has increased in all areas of knowledge (1), including
biomedical and health fields (2,3).
Bibliometric studies use statistical methods to quantify and describe the
characteristics of scientific literature (4). Bibliometrics have systematically characterized the
scientific publications of Peruvian authors and institutions in defined time
periods, by subject (5-7) and for the purpose of description,
evaluation or monitoring (8,9).
The Peruvian Instituto Nacional de Salud (INS) is a public research institute that is part of
the Peruvian Ministry of Health (MINSA). Its mission is to promote and
disseminate scientific research in the public health field, to improve population’s
living conditions. Some studies have quantified the scientific production of
the INS. Between 2007 and 2011, the MINSA had 457 publications; however, it is
not possible to identify in how many did INS participate (1). An
analysis in the Web of Science (WoS) database for the
period 1997-2016 found 196 publications with INS participation (2).
Another study of Peruvian scientific production in medicine from journals
indexed in WoS found 65 publications with INS
affiliation between 2000 and 2009 (3).
We did not find specific studies on the INS scientific production, so we
lack information about INS publications, such as characteristics, trends over
time and the impact of the citations. The two-decades analysis
of these bibliometric indicators will allow to properly fill this knowledge gap
(2). Due to the foregoing, we conducted a bibliometric study of the
original scientific publications with the participation of the INS during 1998-2018.
KEY MESSAGES |
Motivation for the study: The biomedical
scientific production in Peru has been quantified,
however, the production of the Instituto Nacional
de Salud del Peru (INS) has not been evaluated. Main findings: The INS participated in 618 original
publications. Over the years it has increased its production and has more
international collaboration and citations, however, its leadership has
decreased. The 3 most addressed topics were vector-borne diseases,
tuberculosis, and zoonoses. Implications: Peru needs a strengthened public
health research institute with national and international leadership. |
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Design and information source
A bibliometric study of the INS scientific production was carried out
through the analysis of original publications in magazines indexed in Scopus
and Scielo Perú during 1998-2018.
The Scopus database was selected because it includes all the journals
indexed in Medline (4) and has an important collection of Latin
American journals. It also facilitates the search by institutional affiliation
and the identification of the authors’ affiliations, which is necessary for the
collaboration indicators (10). Scielo Perú allowed the inclusion of publications in Peruvian
journals not indexed in Scopus.
The search was conducted in October 2019. In Scopus, the search by
affiliation to the “Instituto Nacional de Salud, Lima” was used (affiliation identifier: 60071247).
It was filtered for the period 1998-2018; later the database was downloaded in
.CSV format, according to the following variables: authors, document title,
year, title of the source/journal, authors with affiliations, abstract, and document
type.
Journals in the “Health Sciences” category from SciELO
Perú were identified. At the time of the search, this
base included 12 journals. In order to recover these publications, all the
issues of the journals published in Scielo Peru’s
portal were reviewed. The digitized version of each publication was manually
reviewed and those with at least one author with INS affiliation were obtained.
This identification was carried out by two analysts with experience in
bibliometric studies (DF and MC).
Analysis unit
The unit of analysis was the original publication. The following document
types were considered for Scielo Perú’s
records: original article, short original article and short communication. Regarding
Scopus, records were manually reviewed to validate them as publications that
reported results of study a or research project,
following the structure or not (introduction, methods, results and discussion).
Data base elaboration
664 publications were obtained from Scopus, 3 of them eliminated due to
repetition, and 12 removed due to the lack of author with INS affiliation.
After debugging, 649 records were left. Data from 621 publications was
collected by the manual search of Scielo Perú.
On Scopus, the following indexed publications were found: 508 articles,
57 letters to the editor, 34 editorials, 33 reviews, 10 notes, 4 conference papers,
2 misprints and 1 article in press. On Scielo Perú: 266 original articles, 65 letters to the editor, 50
editorials, 45 review articles, 39 short communications, 38 original short
articles, 37 special articles, 28 conference papers, 19 photo galleries, 16
case reports, 14 historical/biographical articles, 2 notes, 1 current issue and
1 guidance document.
Databases recovered from Scopus and Scielo Perú were consolidated. Between
1998 and 2018, publications from the Revista
de Gastroenterología del Perú, the Revista
de Investigaciones Veterinarias
del Perú and the Revista
Peruana de Biología, as well as the publications
between 2009 and 2018 from the Revista
Peruana de Medicina Experimental y Salud Pública (RPMESP),
produced duplicate records. The Spanish titles were compared, and 302
duplicates were eliminated. The consolidated database comprised 968 records.
A consolidated spreadsheet was created for the original publications. Since
the information exported from Scopus presented errors in the document
classification, each record was manually verified, by reviewing the structure
and information of the abstract or the full article, in order to validate it as
an original publication. This process was carried out by two experienced collaborators
in bibliometric studies. In case of discrepancies, the identification was made
by the author.
The database of the original publications included the following
variables: recovery database, name of scientific journal, year of publication,
title of publication, abstract, authors, institutional signature, country signature.
The names of the authors were manually normalized due to incomplete
data, spelling problems or different names for the same author. For the
standardization of the institutional affiliation, the largest institution
comprising a laboratory, management, institute, faculty or sub-unit was
considered.
For the citation analysis, the number of citations per year for each
record with at least one citation was collected in a spreadsheet. The citation
count was performed only for the publications retrieved from Scopus through its
Metrics tool. The publications retrieved from Scielo Perú were not considered because their citation-counting
tool is still going through the development phase and it was confirmed that in
many cases it does not provide accurate data.
Variables
The number of original publications per year of publication, scientific
journal name and subject matter were the production indicators. The publication
years were re-categorized into 2 sub-periods (1998-2008 and 2009-2018). The
author assigned the thematic manually, by reviewing the title and abstract of
each publication and taking as reference the National Priorities for Health
Research in Peru 2019-2023 (11). The productivity index was defined
as the logarithm of the number of original publications per year.
The productivity index for authors with INS affiliation was categorized
into small producers (1 publication), medium producers (2-9 publications) and
large producers (≥10 publications) (4).
The collaboration indicators were the following: co-authorship (number
of authors/number of original publications), number of institutional signatures
per document (number of institutional signatures/number of original
publications), national collaboration rate (original publications with at least
one institutional signature from Peru other than the INS/total number of
original publications × 100%), and international collaboration rate (percentage
of original publications with at least one foreign institution signature).
The number of authors was recategorized into
single, two to five, six to ten, and more than ten. The number of institutional
signatures was recategorized into only INS, two to
three, four to five, and six or more. Journals were considered to be national
(published in Peru) or foreign, based on their identification. The occurrence
of a first author with INS affiliation was used as an indicator of capacity for
creation and initiative (12), since it is the position with the
greatest intellectual and operational contribution within the study (13,14).
The following indicators are constructed from the number of citations
per year: citations obtained per original publication, citation/original publication
index, number of original publications cited at least once, and proportion of
documents cited (4). The speed of citation was defined as the time
(in years) from publication to the first citation (10).
Data analysis
Bibliometric indicators will be presented for the entire study period
and for the sub-periods 1998-2008 and 2009-2018. The bibliometric indicators of
production, collaboration and impact will be presented in frequencies,
percentages and central tendency measures. The characteristics associated to
original publications with first authorship from the INS were evaluated. Proportions
were compared with the Chi-square test, and the ratio of proportions was
calculated with a 95% confidence interval. The H index was calculated for the INS
production. The statistical analysis was carried out in Microsoft Excel and Epidat 3.1.
RESULTS
Production indicators
During the study period, 618 original publications with at least one
author with INS affiliation were recovered from Scopus and Scielo
Perú. A second-degree polynomial type growth was
observed in the scientific production (Figure 1). 55.9% (346/618) of the articles
were published in Peruvian journals. Between 1998 and 2008, 26.6% (62/233) of
the articles were published in international journals, and between 2009 and
2018, it was 54.5% (210/385). For the whole period, 136 different journals
published articles; 77.8% of the publications were concentrated in 26 journals
(Table 1).
lFigure 1. Evolution of
original publications*, first authored by the Instituto
Nacional de Salud and international collaboration,
1998-2018.
Table 1. Main scientific journals regarding diffusion of original publications
with institutional affiliation of the Instituto
Nacional de Salud, 1998-2018.
No. |
Journal |
Country a |
Subperiod |
Total |
|||
1998-2008 |
2009-2018 |
n |
% |
Accumulated
% |
|||
1 |
Revista Peruana de Medicina Experimental y Salud Pública |
Peru |
158 |
125 |
283 |
45.8 |
45.8 |
2 |
Anales de la Facultad de Medicina |
Peru |
9 |
29 |
38 |
6.1 |
51.9 |
3 |
American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene |
USA |
12 |
7 |
19 |
3.1 |
55.0 |
4 |
PLoS ONE |
USA |
1 |
12 |
13 |
2.1 |
57.1 |
5 |
Emerging Infectious Diseases |
USA |
3 |
9 |
12 |
1.9 |
59.1 |
6 |
International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease |
France |
6 |
5 |
11 |
1.8 |
60.8 |
7 |
Acta Tropica |
Holland |
0 |
9 |
9 |
1.5 |
62.3 |
8 |
PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases |
USA |
0 |
8 |
8 |
1.3 |
63.6 |
9 |
Genome Announcements |
USA |
0 |
7 |
7 |
1.1 |
64.7 |
10 |
Revista de Salud Pública |
Colombia |
1 |
6 |
7 |
1.1 |
65.9 |
11 |
Toxicon |
United Kingdom |
0 |
7 |
7 |
1.1 |
67.0 |
12 |
Malaria Journal |
United Kingdom |
0 |
6 |
6 |
1.0 |
68.0 |
13 |
Revista de Gastroenterología del Perú |
Peru |
2 |
4 |
6 |
1.0 |
68.9 |
14 |
Revista Médica Herediana |
Peru |
0 |
6 |
6 |
1.0 |
69.9 |
15 |
Memorias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz |
Brazil |
3 |
2 |
5 |
0.8 |
70.7 |
16 |
BMC Infectious Diseases |
United Kingdom |
0 |
4 |
4 |
0.6 |
71.4 |
17 |
Clinical Infectious Diseases |
United Kingdom |
3 |
1 |
4 |
0.6 |
72.0 |
18 |
Horizonte Médico (Lima) |
Peru |
0 |
4 |
4 |
0.6 |
72.7 |
19 |
International Journal of Infectious Diseases |
Holland |
0 |
4 |
4 |
0.6 |
73.3 |
20 |
Journal of Medical Entomology |
USA |
0 |
4 |
4 |
0.6 |
73.9 |
21 |
Nutrición Clinica y Dietetica
Hospitalaria |
Spain |
0 |
4 |
4 |
0.6 |
74.6 |
22 |
Revista da Sociedade Brasileira de Medicina
Tropical |
Brazil |
2 |
2 |
4 |
0.6 |
75.2 |
23 |
Revista de Investigaciones Veterinarias del Perú |
Peru |
0 |
4 |
4 |
0.6 |
75.9 |
24 |
Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de Sao Paulo |
Brazil |
1 |
3 |
4 |
0.6 |
76.5 |
25 |
Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública |
USA |
1 |
3 |
4 |
0.6 |
77.2 |
26 |
Revista Peruana de Biología |
Peru |
2 |
2 |
4 |
0.6 |
77.8 |
a Country of the publisher according to Scimago Journal & Country Rank.
During the period between 1998 and 2008 the mean (standard deviation
[SD]) productivity index was 1.25 (0.28), and during 2009-2018, 1.78 (0.09). We
identified 440 different authors with INS affiliation; according to the
productivity index, 231 (52.5%) were small producers; 179 (40.7%), medium
producers; and 30 (6.8%), large producers. At the time the data was retrieved, 7
large producers no longer had institutional affiliation with the INS (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Distribution of the production of original
publications among authors with affiliation to the Instituto
Nacional de Salud, 1998-2018.
First authorship
From the total of publications, 49.0% (303/618) had a first author with
INS affiliation. Between the two subperiods, first
authorship with INS affiliation decreased from 62.2% to 41.0% (Figure 1). The
presence of a first author with INS affiliation is twice as frequent among
publications without international collaboration (PR: 2.93; 95%CI: 2.29 to
3.74). As the number of authors and institutional signatures increases, the
probability of beign an INS-affiliated first author
is lower. An INS-affiliated first author is associated with publications in
national journals, especially in the RPMESP (PR: 2.33; 95%CI: 1.95 to
2.79) (Appendix 1).
Thematic analysis
132 (21.4%) of the publications were on vector-borne diseases, 60 (9.7%)
on tuberculosis and 59 (9.5%) on zoonoses. In 24 of
the 29 topics, the production increased in the second subperiod:
tuberculosis went from 16 to 44; food and nutrition, from 12 to 30;
non-communicable diseases, from one to 24; antivenoms,
from 4 to 7; bibliometrics, from 1 to 13; etc.
Between 1998 and 2008, vector-borne diseases, tuberculosis, and zoonoses accounted for 51.5% of publications; during 2009-2018,
these topics accounted for only 34.0% (Table 2).
Table 2. Thematic of the
scientific production of original publications with participation of the Instituto Nacional de Salud,
1998-2018.
Theme |
1998-2008 |
2009-2018 |
Total |
|||
n |
%
a |
n |
%
a |
n |
% |
|
Vector-borne diseases |
78 |
33.5 |
54 |
14.0 |
132
b |
21.4 |
Tuberculosis |
16 |
6.9 |
44 |
11.4 |
60 |
9.7 |
Zoonoses |
26 |
11.2 |
33 |
8.6 |
59
c |
9.5 |
Food and nutrition |
12 |
5.2 |
30 |
7.8 |
42 |
6.8 |
Other infectious communicable diseases |
20 |
8.6 |
13 |
3.4 |
33 |
5.3 |
Microbiology |
16 |
6.9 |
16 |
4.2 |
32 |
5.2 |
Non-communicable diseases |
1 |
0.4 |
23 |
6.0 |
24 |
3.9 |
Entomology |
6 |
2.6 |
15 |
3.9 |
21 |
3.4 |
Retrovirus infections |
10 |
4.3 |
8 |
2.1 |
18 |
2.9 |
Human resources in health |
3 |
1.3 |
13 |
3.4 |
16 |
2.6 |
Antivenoms |
4 |
1.7 |
11 |
2.9 |
15 |
2.4 |
Child and adolescent health |
3 |
1.3 |
12 |
3.1 |
15 |
2.4 |
Bibliometric |
1 |
0.4 |
13 |
3.4 |
14 |
2.3 |
Nutritional and metabolic diseases |
2 |
0.9 |
12 |
3.1 |
14 |
2.3 |
Others d |
2 |
0.9 |
12 |
3.1 |
14 |
2.3 |
Viral hepatitis
|
5 |
2.1 |
7 |
1.8 |
12 |
1.9 |
Mycosis |
10 |
4.3 |
2 |
0.5 |
12 |
1.9 |
Health services |
2 |
0.9 |
10 |
2.6 |
12 |
1.9 |
Mental health |
1 |
0.4 |
9 |
2.3 |
10 |
1.6 |
Pharmaceutical products |
3 |
1.3 |
6 |
1.6 |
9 |
1.5 |
Occupational health |
2 |
0.9 |
7 |
1.8 |
9 |
1.5 |
Violence |
1 |
0.4 |
7 |
1.8 |
8 |
1.3 |
Viral respiratory infections |
2 |
0.9 |
5 |
1.3 |
7 |
1.1 |
Medicinal plants |
2 |
0.9 |
4 |
1.0 |
6 |
1.0 |
Sexual and reproductive health |
0 |
0.0 |
6 |
1.6 |
6 |
1.0 |
Management and research ethics |
1 |
0.4 |
4 |
1.0 |
5 |
0.8 |
Heavy metals |
0 |
0.0 |
5 |
1.3 |
5 |
0.8 |
Health information systems |
2 |
0.9 |
3 |
0.8 |
5 |
0.8 |
Health in indigenous communities |
2 |
0.9 |
1 |
0.3 |
3 |
0.5 |
a Percentage of the
number of original publications of the corresponding period. b Includes subtopics: malaria (38), leishmaniasis (26), dengue fever (24), Chagas disease (18),
human bartonellosis (10), yellow fever (8), other
arboviruses (4), and acute febrile syndrome (4). c
Includes subtopics: leptospirosis (14), rickettsiosis (10), echinococcosis (8),
rabies (7), hydatidosis (5), plague (4), fascioliasis
(3), brucellosis (2), toxocariasis (2), cysticercosis (2), Borrelia
infections (1), and ehrlichiosis (1). d Includes gastroesophageal reflux, alternative
medicine, climate change, zoology, vaccination, traffic accidents, clinical
practice guidelines, genomics, pulmonary embolism, bioinformatics, microbioma.
Collaboration indicators
We identified 4,099 author signatures. For the entire study period the
co-authorship index was 6.63. In addition, 80.3% of the publications had
collaborations with authors from another institution. Between the two subperiods, the rate of international collaboration went
from 27.9% to 45.5%, while national collaboration went from 65.2% to 71.2%
(Table 3).
Table 3. Bibliometric
collaboration indicators of the Instituto Nacional de
Salud, 1998-2018.
Indicator |
Period |
Total |
|
1998-2008 |
2009-2018 |
||
Number of
original publications (a) |
233 |
385 |
618 |
Number of
author signatures (b) |
1,370 |
2,729 |
4,099 |
Number of
institutional signatures (c) |
618 |
1,426 |
2,044 |
Co-authorship
rate (b/a in %) |
5.9 |
7.1 |
6.6 |
Index of
number of institutional signatures (c/a in %) |
2.7 |
3,7 |
3.3 |
Number of
OPs with at least one institution with a foreign country signature (d) |
65 |
175 |
240 |
International
collaboration rate (d/a in %) |
27.9 |
45.5 |
38.8 |
OP number
with at least one institution (other than INS) with Peru country signature
(e) |
152 |
274 |
426 |
National
collaboration rate (e/a in %) |
65.2 |
71.2 |
68.9 |
OP number
with INS affiliation (without collaboration) (f) |
58 |
64 |
122 |
Proportion
of OP without institutional collaboration (f/a in %) |
24.9 |
16.6 |
19.7 |
OP: Original publication
Throughout the whole period, INS collaborated with 491 different
institutional signatures from 42 countries (including Peru). Among the
institutional signatures, 182 were from Peru; 68 from the United States; 30
from Brazil; 25 from Argentina; and 18 from Ecuador. In these institutional
interactions, there were 2,679 collaborations with authors affiliated with a
Peruvian institution; 806 with authors affiliated with institutions in the
United States; 395 with institutions in Brazil; 113 with institutions in
Argentina; and 81 with institutions in Ecuador (Appendix 2). The 3 institutions
with the greatest interaction with the INS were the Universidad Nacional Mayor
de San Marcos (UNMSM), with 319 co-authors, followed by the Universidad Peruana
Cayetano Heredia (UPCH), with 307, and the United
States Center for Disease Control and Prevention, with 274 (Appendix 3).
Citation analysis
Of 407 original publications recovered from Scopus, 339 (83.3%) were
cited at least once. The number of citations was 5,206. The 65 publications during
1998-2008 generated 325 citations, while the 342 publications from the
2009-2018 period generated 4,881. The citation/document
index for the entire period was 12.8 (Table 4). Between 2008 and 2015, articles
published in each year were cited 400 time or more since their publication (Appendix
4).
Table 4. Citation analysis of original
publications of the Instituto Nacional de Salud del Peru, according to
Scopus a for the period 1999-2018.
Year |
Number of OPs (a) |
Number of
OPs cited at least once (b) |
Proportion
of OPs cited (b/a in %) |
Number of citations
received by all OPs in each year (c) |
Index of quotations/
publication (c/a) |
1999 |
1 |
1 |
100.0 |
0 |
0.0 |
2000 |
2 |
1 |
50.0 |
1 |
0.5 |
2001 |
2 |
1 |
50.0 |
3 |
1.5 |
2002 |
6 |
5 |
83.3 |
1 |
0.2 |
2003 |
9 |
9 |
100.0 |
8 |
0.9 |
2004 |
7 |
7 |
100.0 |
27 |
3.9 |
2005 |
7 |
7 |
100.0 |
41 |
5.9 |
2006 |
6 |
5 |
83.3 |
61 |
10.2 |
2007 |
11 |
10 |
90.9 |
74 |
6.7 |
2008 |
14 |
13 |
92.9 |
109 |
7.8 |
2009 |
30 |
25 |
83.3 |
134 |
4.5 |
2010 |
30 |
30 |
100.0 |
196 |
6.5 |
2011 |
33 |
30 |
90.9 |
301 |
9.1 |
2012 |
30 |
27 |
90.0 |
359 |
11.9 |
2013 |
37 |
35 |
94.6 |
405 |
10.9 |
2014 |
43 |
40 |
93.0 |
527 |
12.3 |
2015 |
46 |
41 |
89.1 |
583 |
12.7 |
2016 |
38 |
29 |
76.3 |
743 |
19.6 |
2017 |
25 |
16 |
64.0 |
856 |
34.2 |
2018 |
30 |
7 |
23.3 |
777 |
25.9 |
Total |
407 |
339 |
83.3 |
5,206 |
12.8 |
a Quotations received as of October 2019; OP: Original publication.
From the publications with some citations, 106 (31.3%) were cited in the
same year of publication; 151 (44.5%), after 1 year; 46 (13.6%), after 2 years;
17 (5.0%), after 3 years; 7 (2.1%), after 4 years; 5 (1.5%), after 5 years; 3 (0.9%),
after 6 years; 2 (0.6%), after 7 years; 1 (0.3%), after 8 years; and 1 (0.3%),
after 10 years.
Original publications with INS affiliation had an H index of 37. The
article with the most citations was published in 2011 and reached 176
citations. In that article, the INS-affiliated author was ranked 12th. Four
publications received more than 100 citations. In none of them did the first
author have an INS affiliation. Of the 35 most cited publications (≥40
citations), three (8.6%) had a first author with INS affiliation (Appendix 5).
DISCUSSION
Production of original publications with INS participation has shown an
increasing trend from 1998 to 2015, and there was a 65.2% growth in the number
of publications in the decade of 2009-2018. INS has contributed 618 original
publications, and if we consider all types of publications, the contribution
would reach almost a thousand articles. Taking as a denominator the 6,032
biomedical publications with participation of some Peruvian institution found
between 1997 and 2016 in the WoS (2) base,
between 10% and 15% of the biomedical scientific production of Peru had INS
participation. To understand this estimate, we must consider the analysis of a
different database and two additional years.
From 2016 to 2018 the number of publications decreased, there can be
several plausible explanations: a) the lower production of new research
projects; the INS web portal shows that only 1 out of 44 projects financed for
2018 was approved that year, and 10 in 2017; 5 out of the 31 projects financed
for 2019 were approved that year, the others were generated and approved in
previous years; b) the emigration of large producers, as of 2019 almost a
quarter of these authors were no longer INS-affiliated; and c) the
non-completion of research projects, due to administrative and logistical
problems in the purchase of goods and services for research activities (17).
The fewer studies generated, conducted and concluded,
the fewer publications to disseminate their results.
Approaches to INS scientific production were made in studies that
measured national production. For example, between 2000 and 2009, 65
publications were identified in the ISI Web of Knowledge database (3),
while between 1997 and 2016, 196 publications with INS affiliation were found
in WoS (2). Both analyses recovered
articles of diverse typology. In our study, taking into account only original
publications, we found four and three times the amounts reported for those
periods, by the mentioned studies. This difference could be explained by the
database used, WoS has selective criteria for the
inclusion of journals. In 2014 the number of journals indexed in WoS was 12,000, while in Scopus it was 21,921,
in addition, 11,738 journals were indexed in Scopus but not in WoS (10).
The productivity of INS authors follows Lotka’s
law. Almost half of them had low productivity, and 30 were the most productive,
which means that a significant percentage of researchers worked on a research
project and did not re-engage in the research-publication process; therefore,
they did not continue the line of research initiated (15). This characteristic
does not allow the formation of experts in thematic lines nor does it encourage
collaboration in these areas (16). Another explanation would be the lack
of an adequate publication culture. Between 2004 and 2008, only 18 of 129 INS
research projects became a scientific publication (17). Another
study showed that 79 (26.7%) of 296 abstracts submitted to an international
congress on tropical diseases culminated in scientific publication within 6
years (18).
When it comes to biomedical research, authorship contribution is usually
assigned in descending order: the first author is the one with the greatest
contribution to the scientific activities of the study and exercises leadership
during the project (12,19). It was found
that first authorship of INS-affiliated authors decreased in the last decade,
which could be associated with the increase of the international collaboration
ratio and a secondary role of INS authors. In collaborative studies, authors
from low- and middle-income countries are often relegated in the order of
authorship because their contribution is limited to recruitment of study
subjects, data collection, sample referral, and other technical aspects (20,21).
As is the case for other research institutions (22,23), the INS international collaboration network
expanded in the decade of 2009-2018. Institutional signatures were most
frequently from the United States, followed by Brazil and Argentina. This trend
has also been observed in similar institutions, such as the Fiocruz
Institute in Brazil (16). The frequent collaboration of Peruvian
institutions with those from the United States has been reported in medical
publications between 2000 and 2009; those that collaborated the most were Johns
Hopkins University, the Center for Disease Control and the University of
Washington (3), the leadership of these U.S. institutions was also
evident between 1997 and 2016 (2).
International collaboration is key to
scientific research in Latin America, including the field of public health.
Between 1996 and 2011, scientific publications on public health and medicine
had a 30% international collaboration rate, decreasing from 35.8% in 1996 to
24.5% in 2011 (24). In our study, international collaboration was found
to be close to 40%, with an increase in the 2009-2018 decade. International
collaboration is variable in Peruvian institutions. In the 2006-2011 period,
74.4% of UPCH publications and 56.2% from UNMSM had international collaboration,
percentages higher than the values (90%) seen in public research institutes (1).
Articles where first authors are from the INS are published mainly in
the RPMESP. This scenario is due to the fact that the INS is the
publisher of this journal, it is published in Spanish
and is the only Peruvian public health journal indexed in Scopus and Medline. A
negative aspect of this preference is that the RPMESP is not indexed in WoS and does not regularly publish in English, which limits
the citation possibility of its articles. In fact, the RPMESP achieved
only 945 citations in the period 2010-2017 (9).
Infectious diseases were the main topic, which is consistent with the
two-thirds of the articles on this subject in publications with Peruvian
participation between 1997-2006 (2). In the
field of infectious diseases, the growth of research on tuberculosis stands
out, which production tripled in the studied subperiods. The large
production in these topics respond to the fact that their authors came from the
National Center of Public Health, a division of the INS dedicated to research
on communicable diseases, where the greatest number of projects are produced (17).
The INS scientific production covered most of the topics included in the
national research priorities (25) and in the research agendas approved
in 2009 and 2011, respectively. Despite this, there were some neglected topics,
for example, maternal mortality did not have any specific research, or mental
health which had 10 publications in 20 years, 9 of them in the last decade. The
reduced scientific production on such topics is a problem in the country. An
analysis of the national scientific production between 2011 and 2014 found
maternal mortality and mental health, with 11 and 28 original articles
respectively (26), as the least studied topics.
As of 2011, there were over 300 citations per year, and 2017 had the
highest number of citations for INS articles. This phenomenon could be
explained by the indexing of the RPMESP in Scopus and by the increase of
international collaboration and publications in international journals (27).
One third of the publications received at least one citation in the same year
of publication, and almost half during the following year, this reflects a high
speed of citation; that is, research results tend to be disseminated quickly to
the scientific community and used in a short time (10).
This study had some limitations: the citation analysis of all the original
publications was not performed, only those obtained from Scopus, which would
not reflect the real use and impact of these publications. This analysis
supposes an appropriate attribution of authorship, which could be affected by
the changes in the authorship criteria occurred in the two decades covered by
this study. INS authors might have not recognized their institutional
affiliation, and authors not related to the institution might have stated an
INS affiliation (28). The analysis of funding sources was not
carried out, due to the heterogeneity of the reports, neither the analysis of
indicators that evaluate dissemination, industrial production or the impact on
health services or systems (29). Finally, this analysis may not
reflect all of INS’s scientific activities, since near 85% of projects it
undertakes are not published (17).
The strength of this study is the analysis of original publications,
which are the standard format for presenting results of scientific research about
technologies, products, new concepts or hypotheses. Citation of these articles
brings us closer to the effective impact of an institution’s publications on
the scientific progress (30).
In conclusion, there is an increase of INS participation in original publications during the 2009-2018 decade, despite a drop in production in the last three years of observation. The contribution has been mainly on vector-borne diseases, tuberculosis and zoonoses. The growing international collaboration has generated more publications in foreign and increasingly cited journals, but it reduced the articles with first authors from the INS. It is recommended to consolidate international collaboration with greater INS leadership; to increase the amount of large producers; to consolidate the new thematic areas in which INS researchers are positioning themselves; and to increase the rate of collaboration at the national level, with equal care as at the international level.
Acknowledgements
To Joselyn Quispe, Diego Flores and Maricela del Carmen Castillo for their work in constructing, cleaning and processing the database. To Paolo Wong Chero for the critical review of the manuscript.
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Correspondence to: Franco Romaní; Capac Yupanqui
1400, Jesus María, Lima, Perú;
fromani@ins.gob.pe.
Authors’ contributions: FR conceptualized and designed the study, reviewed and validated the
database, analyzed the information, wrote the manuscript, approved the final
version, and assumes responsibility for its content.
Conflict of Interest: FR serves as executive director of the Office of Technological
Transfer and Training of the Instituto Nacional de Salud. He is also scientific editor of the Revista Peruana de Medicina
Experimental y Salud Pública.
Funding: The study was funded by the Instituto
Nacional de Salud.
Supplementary material: Available in the electronic version of
the RPMESP.
Cite as: Romaní F. Bibliometric
analysis of original scientific publications from the Instituto
Nacional de Salud del Perú from 1998 to 2018. Rev Peru Med Exp
Salud Publica. 2020;37(3):485-94. doi: https://doi.org/10.17843/rpmesp.2020.373.5470.