Internationalization of pediatric sleep apnea research

Recently, the socio-medical importance of obstructive sleep apnea in infancy and childhood increases worldwide. The present investigation aims at analyzing the dynamic science internationalization in this narrow field as reflected in three data-bases and at outlining the most significant scientists, institutions and primary information sources.

A scientometric study of data from a retrospective problem-oriented search on pediatric sleep apnea in three data-bases such as Web of Science, MEDLINE and Scopus was carried out. A set of parameters of publication output and citations was followed-up. Several scientometric distributions were created and enabled the identification of some essential peculiarities of the international scientific communications.

There was a steady world publication output increase. In 1972-2010, 4192 publications from 874 journals were abstracted in MEDLINE. In 1985-2010, more than 8100 authors from 64 countries published 3213 papers in 626 journals and 256 conference proceedings abstracted in Web of Science. In 1973-2010, 152 authors published 687 papers in 144 journals in 19 languages abstracted in Scopus. USA authors dominated followed by those from Australia and Canada. Sleep, Int. J. Pediatr. Otorhinolaryngol., Pediatr. Pulmonol. and Pediatrics belonged to 'core' journals concerning Web of Science and MEDLINE while Arch. Dis. Childh. and Eur. Respir. J. dominated in Scopus. Nine journals being currently published in 5 countries contained the terms of 'sleep' or 'sleeping' in their titles. David Gozal, Carole L. Marcus and Christian Guilleminault presented with most publications and citations to them. W.H. Dietz' paper published in Pediatrics in 1998 received 764 citations. Eighty-four authors from 11 countries participated in 16 scientific events held in 12 countries which were immediately devoted to sleep research. Their 13 articles were cited 170 times in Web of Science. Authors from the University of Louisville, Stanford University, and University of Pennsylvania published most papers on pediatric sleep apnea abstracted in these data-bases.

The newly created data-base with the researchers' names, addresses and publications could be used by scientists from smaller countries for further improvement of their international collaboration.