UC San Diego

Purpose

To explore the relevance of scientific production on glaucoma using bibliometric tools.

Design

Bibliographic study.

Participants

Original articles published from 1900 through 2019.

Methods

We performed a search in Web of Science for documents published between 1900 and 2019. We used bibliometric indicators to explore documents production, dispersion, distribution, time of duplication, and annual growth, as characterized by Price's law of scientific literature growth, Lotka's law, the transient index, and the Bradford model. We also calculated the participation index of different countries and institutions. Finally, we explored with bibliometric mapping the co-occurrence networks for the most frequently used terms in glaucoma research.

Main outcome measures

Bibliometric indicators for individuals, institutions, and countries.

Results

A total of 33 631 original articles were collected from the timeframe 1900 through 2019. Price's law showed an exponential growth. Scientific production was adjusted better to exponential growth (r = 0.967) than linear growth (r = 0.755). Literature on glaucoma research increased its growth in the last 30 years at a rate of 5.1% per year with a production that doubled its size every 13.9 years. The transience index was 60.08%; this indicates that most of the scientific production is the output of very few authors. Bradford's law showed a high concentration of articles published in a small core of specialized journals. Lotka's law indicated that the distribution of authors is concentrated heavily in small producers. The United States and University of London demonstrated the highest production of original articles. Map network visualization showed the generated term map detailing clusters of closely related terms.

Conclusions

Glaucoma literature has grown exponentially. A very high rate of transience was found that indicates the presence of numerous authors who sporadically publish on this topic. No evidence of a saturation point in the glaucoma literature was observed.