Analysis of the medical and biological pain research literature in the European Union: A 2006 snapshot

Abstract

This study analyzed 2443 papers published in 2006 by European Union authors on pain-related research. Five EU countries (the UK, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and France) each published > 200 papers while three countries (Cyprus, Malta and Estonia) published none; socio-economic indicators were related to each country's productivity. The 2443 papers were published in 592 journals and Cephalalgia, Pain and European Journal of Pain were the most prolific. Publications were also analyzed for intra-versus inter-EU/non-EU collaborations and subdisciplines profiles in Clinical Medicine and the Life Sciences for the World, USA, EU and the top-four EU countries were compared.

Evolution of the Scientific Literature on Pain from 1976 to 2007

“…During the last decade, the scientific, political, and geographical expansions of the European Union have advanced continuously, with a noticeable impact on pain research. This evolution can be illustrated by the publication of guidelines for the management of pain issued from research projects funded by the European Union [42,43]; furthermore, a recent paper highlighted the important contribution of the EU scientific community to pain research [44]. In 1995, three important nations (Austria, Finland, and Sweden) were integrated into the EU and from 2004 to 2007, another 12 countries became EU members.…”

Iranian Medical Universities in SCIE: evaluation of address variation

“…Many studies used the number of publications to evaluate scientific productivity of disciplines, countries or regions (Ruiz et al 2006;Rey-Rocha et al 2006;Wen et al 2007;Goncalves et al 2009;Robert et al 2009). Among them, some focused on ranking medical universities and faculties based on their research output (Aminpour et al 2009;Torres-Salinas et al 2009).…”

Scientometric overview of nursing research on pain management

“…Bibliometric studies about pain have been conducted under the title of pain studies in Africa 9 ; pain research in Croatia 10 ; and medical and biological pain research literature in the European Union 11 . These studies were assessed in a single country and in a group of countries, but providing limited information when compared to the potential findings of bibliometrics and scientometrics.…”