Depression and suicide publication analysis, using density equalizing mapping and output benchmarking

Depression is a major cause of suicide worldwide. This association has been reflected by numerous scientific publications reporting about studies to this theme. There is currently no overall evaluation of the global research activities in this field.

The aim of the current study was to analyze long-term developments and recent research trends in this area.

We searched the Web of Science databases developed by the Thompson Institute of Scientific Information for items concerning depression and suicide published between 1900 and 2007 and analyzed the results using scientometric methods and density-equalizing calculations.

We found that publications on this topic increased dramatically in the time period 1990 to 2007. The comparison of the different Journals showed that the Archives of General Psychiatry had the highest average citation rate (more than twice that of any other Journal). When comparing authors, we found that not all the authors who had high h-indexes cooperated much with other authors. The analysis of countries who published papers on this topic showed that they published papers in relation to their Gross Domestic Product and Purchasing Power Parity. Among the G8 countries, Russia had the highest male suicide rate in 1999 (more than twice that of any of the other G8 countries), despite having published least papers and cooperating least with other countries among the G8.

We conclude that, although there has been an increase in publications on this topic from 1990 to 2006, this increase is of a lower gradient than that of psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis.