A scientometric approach of dynamic science institutionalization in the field of laparoscopic proctocolectomy

1. Introduction

Pure exponential growth in the global pursuit of science builds on contrasting competitive trends - rising competitions between countries and international collaboration across national borders [1]. Home to many of the oldest research universities and other organizational forms, such as academies and research institutes, Europe is the core of scientific productivity between North America and Eastern Asia [2]. Universities and extra-university research institutes provide facilities and support for intercultural collaboration and learning and for scientific discovery, extending massive educational expansion in societies worldwide [3], since countries benefit from the strength of the research universities [4].

The socio-medical importance of neoplastic and inflammatory colorectal diseases continuously increases and requires the joint efforts of specialists in coloproctology and different oncological areas. Successful laparoscopic restorative proctocolectomies were already possible about two decades ago as an appealing alternative to conventional open proctocolectomy surgery. The application of laparoscopy to the ileoanal pouch surgery was first described by Peters [5] in 1992 [6]. The feasibility and safety of laparoscopic ileoanal pouch surgery has been proved by investigators from specialized centers [7-9]. More recently, there has been a growing number of publications devoted closely to laparoscopic proctocolectomy.

The comparison between laparoscopic abdominal transanal proctocolectomy with coloanal anastomosis, low anterior resection, and abdominoperineal resection in 418 patients with low-lying rectal cancer proves that the first procedure is technically feasible and an oncologically safe surgical option [10]. In a patient with a history of ulcerative colitis suffering from synchronous rectal and prostate cancer, the combination of simultaneous laparoscopic proctocolectomy and Retzius sparing robot-assisted radical prostatectomy for synchronous rectal and prostate cancer is both feasible and safe [11] The laparoscopic and open approaches of proctectomy in 488 rectal cancer patients with a mean age of 59 years provide similar values in terms of the direct cost of hospitalization for primary resection [12]. In a 42-year-old female patient with synchronous triple colorectal adenocarcinoma, subtotal laparoscopic proctocolectomy and ileorectal anastomosis with lymph node dissection along the surgical trunk as well as central vascular ligation of the ileocolic artery, inferior mesenteric artery and right and left branches of the middle colic artery result in uneventful postoperative evolution of the patient [13].

The aim of the present study is to analyze scientometrically the dynamic science institutionalization on the specific topic of “laparoscopic proctocolectomy” as reflected in the information portals Web of Science Core Collection (WoS), MEDLINE and BIOSIS Citation Index (BIOSIS) of Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics, USA) and to outline the significant institutions, scientists, journals, and conference proceedings in this rapidly advancing field.

2. Materials and Methods

In February 2018, a retrospective problem-oriented, title-word based search was done in Web of Science Core Collection (WoS), MEDLINE and BIOSIS of Web of Science (Clarivate Analytics, USA) for the time period between 2008-2017. The following scientometric parameters of the publication output and citation activity were comparatively assessed: i) the annual dynamics of publications – the number of abstracted publications – the total and the yearly number; ii) the languages of publications, iii) the authors – the number of unique names, the number of publications, and the country belongings; iv) the journals – the total and the yearly number, the number of abstracted articles from single journals; v) the scientific institutions – the organizational types, the country belongings and the thematic belongings; vi) the scientific forums – the number of publications and the thematic belongings; and vii) the citations (the number of citations to publications by single authors received in WoS, MEDLINE and BIOSIS during this ten-year period and computerized citation metrics).

3. Results

There were 3,393 publications abstracted in WoS, 5,209- in MEDLINE and only 488 - in BIOSIS. The annual dynamics of publications on the topic abstracted in three data-bases is illustrated in Figure 1.

The comparison between the first and the last three-year periods (2008-2010 towards 2015-2017) indicates an increasing rate of publications amounting to 85.85% in terms of WoS, 109.78% - of BIOSIS and 66.64% - of MEDLINE.

Papers by researchers from 65 countries were abstracted in WoS, and from 37 countries - in BIOSIS. The country distributions according to the number of publications on the topic abstracted in WoS and BIOSIS are demonstrated in Figure 2 and in Figure 3.

There are 23 languages of publication in MEDLINE, 11- in WoS and 7 - in BIOSIS (Table 1).

The fifteen most productive authors on the topic in WoS, MEDLINE and BIOSIS are listed in Table 2. The institutions of these 15 most productive authors (see Table 2) on the topic in WoS are listed below. 1. The Japanese Foundation for Cancer Research,

Gastroenterology Center, The Cancer Institute Hospital, The Department of Gastroenterological Surgery, Ariake, Tokyo, Japan (5 publications) 2. Kitasato University School of Medicine, The Department of Surgery, Kanagawa 2520374, Japan 3. Komagome Hospital, Tokyo Metropolitan Cancer and Infectious Diseases Center, The Department of Surgery, Tokyo, Japan 4. Yonsei University College of Medicine, Severance Hospital, The Department of Surgery, Division of Colon and Rectal Surgery, Seoul 120752, South Korea (3 publications) 5. Kyung Hee University School of Medicine, The Department of Surgery, Seoul 130872, South Korea 6. The Catholic University of Korea, The College of Medicine, The Department of Surgery, Seoul 06591, South Korea 7. The University Hospital of Cleveland, Case Medical Center, The Division of Colorectal Surgery, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA 8. The University of California, Irvine, Irvine Medical Center, The Department of Surgery, The Division of Trauma, Burns and Surgical Critical Care, Orange, CA 92868-3298, USA 9. Poole Hospital, The Department of Colorectal

Surgery, Dorset BH15 2JB, England, UK Ten “core” journals containing most papers on the topic abstracted in WoS and MEDLINE are comparatively shown in Table 3. The analysis of the thematic belongings of the titles of top 25 journals in WoS and MEDLINE each identifies the dominance of the surgical discipline presenting with 12 journals. Next, there are the endoscopy journals (with five titles) followed by oncology, coloproctology and gastroenterology (with four titles each). In BIOSIS, the five “core” journals are the following: Int J Colorectal Dis (with 109 abstracted articles), Gastroenterology (with 44 abstracted articles, but absent in MEDLINE), Hepatogastroenterology (with 39 abstracted articles), Medicine (Hagerstown) (with 28 abstracted articles), and Surgery (St. Louis) (with 19 abstracted articles).

The ten most productive institutions on the topic in WoS are outlined in Table 4, while the four scientific forums with the most numerous abstracted publications - in Table 5.

In WoS, a total of 175 single events of 93 scientific forums such as meetings, congresses, conferences and symposia with a total of 710 unique publications on this topic are abstracted. The corresponding figures for BIOSIS are the following: 30, 19, and 79.

The cumulative computerized citation patterns on the topic in WoS and BIOSIS are summarized in Table 6. Kiril Georgiev Kirov

The analysis of the count of the citations received by top 30 articles reveals that the corresponding numbers range from 109 to 393 in WoS, from 131 to 393 - in MEDLINE, and from 7 to 32 -in BIOSIS. Nine papers appear in MEDLINE only, but 25 - in BIOSIS only. The 10 most cited articles on the topic in WoS are indicated in Table 7. It should be added that the paper by P. Bucher et al. from Switzerland (Int J Colorectal Dis. 2008; 23: 1013-1016) has received a total of 309 citations in MEDLINE.

4. Discussion

As a whole, our results display a considerable dynamic science stratification in this specific narrow field similarly to the majority of “hot” topics in contemporary clinical medicine and biomedicine.

There has been a gradual growth in the publication output during the whole period of observation. We established an outlined domination of the authors from the UK, USA and Japan in WoS, and from China, Japan and South Korea in BIOSIS. The relatively great absolute count and relative share of publications in Chinese and Japanese abstracted in MEDLINE are plentiful, indeed. Seven out of a total of the 15 most productive authors work in three scientific institutions in Japan, while five authors work in three scientific institutions in South Korea. The most productive institutions are located in seven countries from Europe, North America, and Asia. It is noteworthy that the percentages of the cited and citing articles without self-citations in WoS and BIOSIS are considerable. In WoS, the 10 most-cited papers are by authors from five countries. Out of them, there are four articles by researchers from the Netherlands and two by scholars from South Korea and Spain (one from each country).

There are certain advantages and disadvantages of these data-bases [14]. Certain obvious differences in terms of quantitative parameters between the data-bases are due to the different editorial policy of these information centers. This should be improved in order to warrant an optimal coverage aim of the primary literature and more precise indexing algorithms.

According to an original scientometric concept, there is a unity of institutionalization, interdisciplinarity and internationalization of contemporary science and university education [15, 16]. The integration of these components plays a crucial role in the further enhancement of research effectiveness and improvement of science infrastructure at an individual, local, national and international level [17].

The institutionalization of research includes the intrinsic features of the historically established disciplinary organization of scientific and higher educational structures according to the enhanced current requirements and already gained social recognition of the topic. Thus, it is an essential component of the mature scientific discipline or subdiscipline [16, 17, 18].

Along with the acknowledged problem-oriented denominations of single institutions of different

Kiril Georgiev Kirov organizational type, the following essential components belong to science institutionalization [17, 18]: i) the organization of national and international scientific forums on a concrete interdisciplinary (or narrow-monodisciplinary) topic; ii) the regular publication of problem-oriented and narrow- or broad-profile inter- or monodisciplinary journals and monographs and their subsequent inclusion in secondary information sources and data-bases; iii) the foundation of national and international scientific societies and associations; iv) the establishment of corresponding university departments and/or their subdivisions granting the regular education of students; v) the introduction of postgraduate studies and preparation of doctoral dissertations; vi) the introduction of the topic into the university students’ curricula, initially, in the form of extracurricular activity such as invited lectures delivered by experts from the same country or abroad, the publication of textbooks and manuals, the organization of summer schools, etc.; vii) the creation and subsequent dynamic development of corresponding paradigms or paradigm circles, etc.

Some newly-published investigations testify the constant interest in science institutionalization worldwide.

The neo-institutional analysis of a comprehensive historical database from 1900 to 2010 reveals both stable and dynamic patterns of production and productivity in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Health in Germany, France, Belgium, and Luxembourg and reveals the varying contributions of different organizational forms, especially research universities and research institutes [2]. The comparison between the institutionalization pathways that create the conditions necessary for the continuous and strong growth in scientific productivity reveals the research university as the key organizational form across countries.

The professionalization and institutionalization of the history of psychology as a specialty in the United States of America is analyzed as a historical-sociological model [19]. Although in the late XIXth and the early XXth centuries, German scholarship represents a model that deeply inspires sociologists across the United States, the institutionalization of sociology within the American universities takes place much earlier and faster than in their German counterparts [20].

The institutionalization framework elements such as nominal, leadership, administrative support, multi-yearly funding, research targets, formal researcher-to-researcher exchange, visibility, evaluation, and supporting characteristics are examined in five case studies of the institutionalization framework in order to account for the development of international university research ventures between the US universities, on the one hand, and China and Singapore’s universities, on the other hand [21]. Both the institutionalization and the internationalization of research devoted to the applications of the geographical information systems in health planning are scientometrically ascertained [14].

The emerging institutionalization of collaborative university-industry networks in Russia is explored by means of conceptual perspectives from institutional theory, especially based on arguments from the strategic choice, network-building, and network failure studies [22]. The process of institutionalization of Russian traumatology and orthopedics is examined [23]. The contributions made by Howard Wilcox Haggard to the institutionalization and consolidation of modern alcohol studies in the twentieth-century post-Prohibition America are considerable [24]. The crucial role played by Ernst von Leyden (1832-1910) in the institutionalization of cancer research in Germany since 1900 is being emphasized [25]. The institutionalization of a palliative and end-of-life care educational program is implemented in a medical school curriculum at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, MD, USA [26]. Due to the inevitable cooperation of different hospital specialties, the institutionalization of skull base surgery is possible through the creation of the Interdisciplinary Center of Skull Base Surgery at the University Hospital of Leipzig, Germany, in 1997 [27]. The history of the institutionalization of asylum and forensic psychiatry in Bucharest during the XIXth century is also described [28]. The institutionalization of neuroethics in Korea is an integral component of Korea’s Brain Initiative within the neuroscience research [29].

5. Conclusions

The expansion of laparoscopic proctocolectomy in modern coloproctology is closely related to the effective science institutionalization in this narrow field and it is still not scientometrically analyzed. A durable increase in the world’s publication output and international prestige of the scientific community from powerful and smaller countries has convincingly been proved as a result of the effective science institutionalization in the most productive centers worldwide. Our present results convincingly demonstrate that the constellation of such specific scientometric indicators enlarges the capacities of problem-oriented analyses and faces the challenges of the timely identification of the essential patterns of scientific advances in these rapidly expanding interdisciplinary fields. They are in line with the tendency towards the broader implementation of the scientometric approach to the timely identification of promising research topics. The systematized files with bibliographic, abstracted and full-text information about laparoscopic proctocolectomy could successfully be used by experienced coloproctologists and beginners from smaller countries, institutional and national science managers and journal editors, as well as in the practice-oriented research involving national and/or international collaborative teams. This complex scientometric methodology could become popular in the postgraduate university curricula.