[Scientometrics and bibliometrics of chronotherapy]

In order to retrieve Chinese and foreign articles of chronotherapy, we searched Chinese databases of CBM, CMCC and foreign series databases in OVID and hence revealed and assessed the current status, research trend and level of chronotherapy in China and in foreign countries by means of scientometric and bibliometric parameters. ProCite5 software and handsearching were used to manage, check and statistically analyze the searched papers so as to find the parameters which included distributions of databases, years, authors, periodicals, subject headings, organizations and nations. 91 Chinese papers were identified which were distributed in 73 kinds of journals and in subject headings, e.g., Traditional Chinese medicine, cardiovascular diseases, neoplasms, asthma, peptic ulcer, diabetes mellitus, general review of chronotherapy, etc. 480 foreign articles were identified which mainly came from EMBASE and MEDLINE and were distributed in 285 types of journals and 35 nations and regions. There were 14 journals which recorded five or more articles. 12 researchers published more than five articles. Paul Brousse Hospital, University of Texas, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Jichi Medical School and University of Minnesota were the core research institutes. There was no core author or core journal or core institute in China up till now. However, core authors, core journals and core research institutes had come into being in foreign countries; they were mainly from the Euro-American developed countries and had done well in chronotherapy.