Assessing the national productivity in subspecialty critical care medicine journals: a bibliometric analysis

In recent years, significant growth has been seen in the subspecialty critical care medicine. However, the national productivity to the subspecialty critical care medicine remains unknown. We therefore intended to reveal the national contribution in the subspecialty critical care medicine journals.

Articles published in 20 highly cited journals in subspecialty critical care medicine from 2006 to 2010 were retrieved from Web of Science and PubMed. The number of total articles and randomized, controlled trials, the per capita numbers, total impact factors (IFs), and citations were tabulated to assess the contribution of different countries.

A total number of 17,667 articles were published in the 20 journals from 2006 to 2010 worldwide. North America, West Europe, and East Asia were the most productive regions. High-income countries published 89.68% of the total articles. The United States published the most number of articles in 2006 to 2010 (6659/17,667, or 37.69%), followed by United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Australia. Besides, the United States also had the most number of randomized, controlled trials (260), the highest total impact factors (27,206.55), and the highest total citations (84,170). When normalized to population size, Australia had the highest number of articles per million population, followed by Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, and Belgium.

The United States is the most productive country in the subspecialty critical care medicine. When normalized to population size, Australia and some European countries might be more productive.