Bibliometric study ranks world-leading institutions researching liver cirrhosis

The University of Barcelona is the institution with the most publications and number of bibliometric citations worldwide in research on liver cirrhosis, followed by the Virginia Commonwealth University (United States), the University College London (United Kingdom), the Mayo Clinic (United States) and the University of Padova (Italy).

This is one of the main conclusions of a bibliometric study on liver cirrhosis published in the World Journal of Gastroenterology and signed by a team of experts from the Southwest Medical University in Luzhou (Sichuan, China).

The study highlights Professor Pere Ginès, from the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the UB, as the researcher with the top citation index per article and one of the experts with the most scientific performance worldwide. The study reviews a total of 7,775 bibliographic records from the Web of Science Core Collection on liver cirrhosis published in 1,511 scientific journals between 2011 and 2020, in an international context covering a total of 109 countries and 6,902 research institutions.

The UB, leading institution in research on liver cirrhosis

Liver cirrhosis is a chronic progressive pathology caused by several factors, and it affects the structure and functioning of the liver. It is now one of the leading causes of death and one of the primary diseases that generate the greatest economic expenditure on health resources. Now, the study explores the trends and frontiers of research and knowledge on this pathology, which has a great impact on the global population.

The University of Barcelona is the institution with the most scientific performance on research on cirrhosis worldwide, with a total of 177 published articles. The other top-positioned institutions are the Virginia Commonwealth University (120), the University College London (119), the Mayo Clinic (117), the University of Padova (111), the Capital Medical University (109), the University of California (102), the Zhejiang University of Technology (102), the University of Copenhagen (99) and the University of Milan (98).

It is noteworthy that 9 of the 10 top institutions are universities, which confirms the research potential of the university institutions in this field of biomedical research. The UB is also leader regarding the number of citations (11,087), followed by the Virginia Commonwealth University (5,826), the University of Padova (5,430), the University College London (5,134) and the Mayo Clinic (4,074).

The article notes that the number of annual publications in this field has grown over the last ten years, especially in the United States and in China. In the map of countries, the United States outstand with the highest bibliometric contribution in the number of articles (1,707), followed by China (1,672), Japan (711), Italy (651), and Spain (486).

Among the ten most relevant countries in this list, the top ratio of citations per article corresponds to France (45.67), the United Kingdom (43.32) and Spain (40.12), compared to the values of the United States (27.09), China (11.63), Japan (15.77), and Italy (34.08).

Professor Pere Ginès has the top world citation index per article

Out of the 35,653 analyzed authors, the study highlights Professor Pere Ginès, from the Department of Medicine of the UB, as the international researcher with the best citation rate per article (89.27), followed by Paolo Angeli (74.07) and Guadalupe Garcia-Tsao (69.13).

Pere Ginès, member of Hospital Clínic—IDIBAPS and the Biomedical Research Networking Center in Hepatic and Digestive Diseases (CIBEREHD), is also part of the international elite of the top 10 researchers with the most scientific performance. In particular, the world ranking is made up by the experts Jasmohan S. Bajaj (with 72 articles), M. Eric Gershwin (70), Xingshun Qi (61), Søren Møller (61), Flemming Bendtsen (60), Hendrik Vilstrup (56), Guadalupe Garcia-Tsao (52), Pere Ginès (49), Xiaozhong Guo (46) and Paolo Angeli (45).

Regarding scientific publications, the journal Liver International has the highest figures (259), followed by Hepatology (242), and by the Journal of Hepatology (212), also the publication with the highest impact factor and top citation rate per article (69.30). The most cited journal is Hepatology (14,922 citations), followed by the Journal of Hepatology (14,479) and Liver International (5,721).