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Skin cancers are caused by the development of abnormal cells that can invade or spread to other parts of the body. The countries whose authors contribute the most amount of articles on skin cancer to academia is still unknown.
The objectives of this study are to apply an author-weighted scheme (AWS) to quantify the credits for coauthors on an article byline and allocate the author weights to the country-level credits in articles.
On July 20, 2019, we obtained 16,804 abstracts published since 1938, based on a keyword search of “skin cancer” in PubMed. The author names, countries/areas, and journals were recorded. International author collaborations on skin cancer were analyzed based on country-level credits in articles. We aimed to do the following: (1) present country distribution for the first authors and the most popular journals, (2) show choropleth maps to highlight the most influential countries, and (3) draw scatter plots based on the Kano model to characterize the features of country-level research achievements. We programmed Excel Visual Basic for Applications (Microsoft Corp) routines to extract data from PubMed. Google Maps was used to display graphical representations.
Our results suggest that researchers in the United States have published most frequently, accounting for 30.37% (5103), while Germany accounts for 7.34% (1234), followed by Australia (997, 5.93%). The top three continents for the proportion of published articles are North America, Europe, and Asia, accounting for 32.29%, 31.71%, and 10.41%, respectively.
This study offers an objective picture of the representativeness and evolution of international research on the topic of skin cancer. The research approaches used here have the potential to be applied to other areas besides skin cancer.
Skin cancers are tumors that arise mostly from the skin due to the development of abnormal cells that invade or spread to other parts of the body [
Ultraviolet exposure has increased partly due to a thinner ozone layer [
We were motivated to investigate which countries contributed the most to research on skin cancer and how much authors from Australia and New Zealand have contributed to the current body of knowledge.
Given the multidisciplinary aspect of skin cancer research, it is necessary to gather specialists in medicine, pathology, and biomedical science to ensure collaboration through resource sharing, exchange of ideas, knowledge dissemination, and information acquisition. No researcher has investigated scientific collaborations on skin cancer, particularly using a fair author-weighted scheme (AWS) for quantifying coauthor contributions to their articles. As such, country-level research achievements are required to evaluate and compare whether AWS has been applied.
Some researchers have applied visualization approaches to interpreting their study results, notably in genetic research, which was identified as the primary collaborative field [
It is also unknown whether the United States and Europe still dominate publication output in science [
The objectives of this study are to apply an AWS to quantify the credits for coauthors on an article byline and allocate the author weights to the country-level credits in articles. Three tasks will be achieved: (1) presenting country distribution for the first authors and the most popular journals, (2) showing choropleth maps to highlight the most influential countries, and (3) drawing scatter plots based on the Kano model to characterize the features of country-level research achievements.
Equation for the x-index.
We searched the PubMed database using the title keywords “skin cancer” on July 20, 2019. The search terms were the string “skin cancer” [Title/Abstract] AND (“1900” [Date-Publication]: “2018” [Date-Publication]); the process can be seen in a YouTube video [
We made an Excel Visual Basic for Applications (Microsoft Corp) module to handle the data. All downloaded abstracts met the requirement for the type of journal article. Others, like those marked with “Published Erratum,” “Editorial,” “conference abstracts,” “commentary,” or those that did not name the author’s nation, were excluded from this study. Ethical approval was not necessary for this study as no human subjects or personal data were involved.
Flow diagram of study selection.
The seven elements are as follows:
Scatter plots were based on the Kano model.
Bubbles were sized by the x-index and colored by the types of research achievements.
Citations used for computing the x-index for countries were replaced with the journal impact factors (JIFs) published by inCites Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics) 2018. The JIFs were shown on the y-axis on the scatter plot mentioned above.
The number of publications for countries/areas was located on the x-axis.
We applied the AWS [
See
The trend of publications for countries/areas was computed by the correlation coefficients using the correl(A,B) function in Excel (Microsoft Corp), where A denotes the series from 2009 to 2018 and B represents the outputs across the 10 years.
Author-weighted scheme equation.
We applied two contingency tables to represent the country distribution for the first authors and the most popular journals.
A choropleth map was used to highlight the most influential countries/areas where authors were affiliated. The country-level citations were replaced by the JIF as seen in
The equation used for computing the country-level citations.
The scatter plot was based on the Kano model, which classified members on the plot into three types: the attribute toward the influential, the productive, or the neutral (or, say, one dimension along at the 45-degree line in the Kano model) [
The x-index was yielded by author-made modules in Excel (Microsoft Corp). We created pages of HTML used for Google Maps. All relevant information on the entities (ie, countries or states in the United States) can be linked to dashboards on Google Maps.
The top three continents for the proportion of published articles are North America, Europe, and Asia, accounting for 32.29%, 31.71%, and 10.41%, respectively. Australia and New Zealand in the Oceania continent account for a mere 6.46% (see
Choropleth map presenting the most productive countries and areas of articles on skin cancer since 1938 (n=16,804).
Choropleth map presenting the most productive states in the United States for articles on skin cancer since 1938 (n=5103).
The top 20 journals with the highest numbers of publications on skin cancer are shown in
Using the x-index [
We can see the United States is productivity-oriented and others are influence-oriented (
Using the x-index to evaluate the achievements on skin cancer for different countries.
Using the x-index to evaluate the achievements on skin cancer for the United States.
The research question in this study was to disclose the country-level research achievements on the topic of skin cancer. The AWS was particularly applied to quantify the credits for coauthors on articles and allocate the weights to the countries/areas using the equations in
Previous research has investigated coauthor collaboration using social network analysis [
A total of 16,804 abstracts were identified when searching PubMed on the keywords “skin cancer” on July 20, 2019. No previous literature uses the seven elements mentioned in Methods to present relevant knowledge to readers or dynamically applies Google Maps as we did in this study. Scientific publication is one of the objective measurements to evaluate the achievements of a medical specialty or discipline as we did in
One strength of this study is the sophisticated use of Google Maps and in-text links for each topic [
There are several limitations to this study. First, caution should be taken when interpreting and generalizing findings beyond this type of research, as data were extracted exclusively from PubMed.
Second, although the data were extracted from PubMed and carefully handled, the original download may have included errors, which may affect the resulting reports in this study.
Third, the formula (
Fourth, the data extracted from PubMed is different from other major citation databases such as the Scientific Citation Index (Clarivate Analytics) and Scopus (Elsevier). The results of the most influential countries/areas might be different if other databases were applied.
Fifth, the x-index [
In conclusion, this study offers an objective picture of the representativeness and evolution of international research on the topic of skin cancer by employing Google Maps to present results. We chose visualization technology to analyze country-level research achievements on skin cancer. As a result, researchers will be able to produce effective research diagrams on Google Maps, improve the efficiency of research work, and provide in-depth insight into the relationships among countries/areas and the types of their research achievements based on the Kano model. The results can provide readers with insight into the evolution of the skin cancer in publications across time and countries/areas.
Number of papers distributed across nation/area and the published years.
Journals on the topic of skin cancer distributed over the years.
author-weighted scheme
journal impact factor
We thank Coding Language Service for providing medical writing services on the manuscript.
TWC conceived and designed the study, HYW interpreted the data, and FJL monitored the process and the manuscript. TWC drafted the manuscript. All authors read the manuscript and approved the final manuscript.
None declared.