Bibliometric study of the orthopaedic publications from China

We aimed to investigate the status quo of orthopaedic publications from China and characterize the most-cited articles to provide valuable insights for orthopaedists.

PubMed and Embase databases were used to search for Chinese orthopaedic publications from 1997 to 2017 to determine the growing pattern of Chinese research globally. Then Web of Science database was searched for articles with most citations in all journals included in the Journal Citation Report 2016 under the category of "orthopaedics" for the last five years, and the total numbers of articles in the last three respective years were also analyzed.

The number of publications published in PubMed and Embase during the last 20 years ranged from 218 to 6836, and year 2002 had the biggest growth rate of 59.15% and 2014 had the biggest growth value of 1203, comparing with previous years. Fifty-three articles were selected as the most-cited ones for the last five years. European Spine Journal and West China Hospital are the journal and institution that published the most high-impact articles. Majority of the articles (47%) were meta-analysis, and 6 RCTs were identified in a total of 11 clinical articles. Most high-cited clinical articles or meta-analyses were classified as level of evidence of I (41.67%).A total of 1238 articles, 1264 articles, and 1225 articles in the field of orthopedics from China were included in SCI for the last three years.

The Chinese orthopaedic research grew rapidly in terms of number of publications in the last decades, and the quality of publications also improved in recent years.