PROPERTIES OF THE RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS IN
NEUROMYELITIS OPTICA. THE USE OF THE WEB OF SCIENCE
DATABASE
Lívia E. C. Talim, Natália C. Talim, Mariza C. T. Talim, Jane R Guirado, Gisele O. Lima, Diogo C Carvalho,
Tauana S Tironi, Izabela C A Duarte, Anderson Silva, Juliana M. S. S. Amaral, Rodrigo Kleinpaul, Márcia
Prates, Carolina R. Araujo, Cristiane F. Rocha, Marco A. Lana-Peixoto.
CIEM MS Research Center, Federal University of Minas Gerais Medical School, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Background
Results
Neuromyelitis optica (NMO) is a central nervous system
We found a total of 2746 indexed documents. No document
was found before 1945. The first authors were most
frequently associated with institutions in USA (24%), Japan
(13%), and Germany (10%). Brazil is ranked #9 in the world
and #1 in Latin America. Mayo Clinic, Tohoku University
and University of California in San Francisco were the most
frequent enhanced-organizations. Types of indexed
documents included original papers (n 1338, 48%), meeting
abstracts (n 818, 30%), and reviews (n 287, 10%). There has
been a tremendous increment in the yearly distribution of
number of publications in the last decade, from 17 in 2000 to
487 in 2013. 95% of the publications are in English
language. The most frequent funding agencies or companies
included the Guthy Jackson Charitable Foundation, Merck
Serono, NIH, Biogen Idec, and National Multiple Sclerosis
Society.
disorder mainly mediated by anti-aquaporin-4 antibody.
Although since its early description the disease has been of
continuous interest to neuroscientists, there has been a nonlinear growth in publication rate in the course of its history.
Increments in number of publications have been usually
associated with most significant advances in understanding
of the disease. We looked at the publications on NMO to
analyze some of their properties and qualities that could
provide insights about global involvement and trends
regarding knowledge of the disease.
Methods
We searched the Web of Science
TM,
Science Citation Index
- Version 2006 - for publications on NMO up to May 31,
2014. We used the following terms: neuromyelitis optica,
Devic´s syndrome, Devic´s disease, neuro-optic myelitis,
neuropticomielitis
aguda,
neuropticomielitis,
opthalmoneuromyélite, oftalmomielitis, mielitis oftálmica,
optic neuritis and myelitis, NMO. The documents were
refined to better understand trends in global research,
affiliations, categories of contribution, research areas,
societies/committees, year of publication, languages,
organizations-enhanced, and funding agencies.
V
V
Number of publications on neuromyelitis optica in the 20th and 21st centuries
1949-1999
3,7%
2000-2013
96,3%
Types of publications on neuromyelitis optica
Distribution of publications on neuromyelitis optica by countries
60.00
50.00
30.00
48.69
40.00
25.00
24.02
30.00
29.41
20.00
20.00
10.00
15.00
10.00
0.00
13.21
9.19
0.00
6.07
4.13
2.08
0.43
0.36
0.25
0.14
8.87
7.11
5.00
10.56
5.92
5.13
4.42
4.27
2.91
2.62
2.51
Conclusion
There has been an increasing global interest in NMO in the
last decade. Institutions in the US and Japan have
contributed the most to research in the field