High-cited favorable studies for COVID-19 treatments ineffective in large trials

Importance. COVID-19 has resulted in massive production, publication and wide dissemination of clinical studies trying to identify effective treatments. However, several widely touted treatments failed to show effectiveness in large well-done randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Objective. To evaluate for COVID-19 treatments that showed no benefits in subsequent large RCTs how many of their most-cited clinical studies had declared favorable results for these interventions. Methods. Scopus (last update December 23, 2021) identified articles on lopinavir-ritonavir, hydroxycholoroquine/azithromycin, remdesivir, convalescent plasma, colchicine or interferon (index interventions) that represented clinical trials and that had received >150 citations. Their conclusions were assessed and correlated with study design features. The ten most recent citations for the most-cited article on each index intervention were examined on whether they were critical to the highly-cited study. Altmetric scores were also obtained. Findings. 40 articles of clinical studies on these index interventions had received >150 citations (7 exceeded 1,000 citations). 20/40 (50%) had favorable conclusions and 4 were equivocal. Highly-cited articles with favorable conclusions were rarely RCTs while those without favorable conclusions were mostly RCTs (3/20 vs 15/20, p=0.0003). Only 1 RCT with favorable conclusions had sample size >160. Citation counts correlated strongly with Altmetric scores, in particular news items. Only 9 (15%) of 60 recent citations to the most highly-cited studies with favorable or equivocal conclusions were critical to the highly-cited study. Conclusion. Many clinical studies with favorable conclusions for largely ineffective COVID-19 treatments are uncritically heavily cited and disseminated. Early observational studies and small randomized trials may cause spurious claims of effectiveness that get perpetuated.

Defaults versus framing: Revisiting Default Effect and Framing Effect with replications and extensions of Johnson and Goldstein (2003) and Johnson, Bellman, and Lohse (2002)

People tend to stick with a default option instead of switching to another option. For instance, Johnson and Goldstein (2003) found a default effect in an organ donation scenario: if organ donation is the default option, people are more inclined to consent to it. Johnson et al. (2002) found a similar default effect in a health-survey scenarios: if receiving more information about your health is the default, people are more inclined to consent to it. Much of the highly cited, impactful work on these default effects, however, has not been replicated in well-powered samples. In two well-powered samples (N = 1920), we conducted a close replication of the default effect in Johnson and Goldstein (2003) and in Johnson, Bellman, and Lohse (2002). We successfully replicated Johnson and Goldstein (2003). In an extension of the original findings, we also show that default effects are unaffected by the permanence of these selections. We, however, failed to replicate the findings of Johnson, Bellman, and Lohse’s (2002) study; we did not find evidence for a default effect. We did, however, find a framing effect: participants who read a positively-framed scenario consented to receive health-related information at a higher rate than participants who read a negatively framed scenario. We also conducted a conceptual replication of Johnson et al. (2002) that was based on an organ-donation scenario, but this attempt failed to find a default effect. Our results suggest that default effects depend on framing and context. Materials, data, and code are available on: https://osf.io/8wd2b/.

Applications of blockchain in government education sector: a comprehensive review and future research potentials

Purpose With the time and increase in usage of information technology (IT), blockchain technology is gaining immense attention from researchers, academicians, and practitioners because of its distinctive features such as transference, security and data reliability. The purpose of this study is to endow with a systematic review of literature on blockchain in context to the government education sector in terms of its usage, benefits, obstacles and practical implementation in future areas in education. Design/methodology/approach The study adopted a bibliometric visualization tool to classify data in yearly publications, highly cited journals, prominent authors, leading publications in countries and institutions and highly cited papers – the data was extracted from the SCOPUS database by using relevant keywords. Thus, the following research questions were developed: How has blockchain technology been used in the government educational sector? What are the benefits examined in the field of education? What were the problems/obstacles faced using the technology in a government education structure? Findings The findings identify and provide a comprehensive review of the technique regarding the present research stream in terms of highest publication, author, journal, subject-wise and relevance of the technology in government education structure. Thus, the future research potential of the technology in the education sector is much more as it is in the initiation stage. A lot of opportunities and benefits need to be extracted at large. Research limitations/implications The present findings of the study provide a base work for government education institutions, policy developers and researchers to investigate other areas where the technology can be implemented. Finally, more technology applications will develop strategies for proper data management and cost-effective decisions. Originality/value This study explains the relevance of technology in education through bibliometric visualization. The study adopted the review and significance of blockchain technology in the government education sector by identifying its benefits, current scenario, application and future research potential areas.

Bibliometric Analysis of Highly Cited Papers on Resources and the Environment in China

To review the current state of resources and environmental sciences in China, this study assessed highly cited papers of five leading CSSCI journals sourced from the Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure database. The fields of resources and environmental sciences were the research focus, and the bibliometric analysis software CiteSpace was used to perform co-occurrence analysis on keywords, authors, and research institutions based on bibliometrics and social network analysis. Furthermore, the research hotspots, scientist groups, and main cooperation models in the field of resources and environmental sciences in China were also explored. The results show that: (1) For 30 years, the interdisciplinarity of resources and environmental sciences has become more and more intense, and research themes have become increasingly extensive. The research hotspots of highly cited papers focused on energy, ecology, land, water resources, and sustainable development. In recent years, problems associated with energy and carbon emissions have aroused great interest. The ecological and sustainable development of resources and environmental elements has emerged as a future research trend. (2) An analysis of scientist-oriented networks shows that highly cited papers are mostly published by group authors. Scientists work closely within their respective academic groups, while intergroup academic cooperation is rare. Furthermore, connectedness between cooperation networks is poor, and scientists are largely connected through their research institutions. Cooperation among scientists is greatly affected by their geographical locations. Research institutions in the same region are more likely to cooperate. Beijing and Nanjing are high-producing areas of highly cited papers. The Institute of Geographic Sciences and Resources, CAS, is the most influential research institution. This paper introduces the state-of-the-art research hotspots of Chinese resources and environmental sciences to international academic circles and provides a basis for the research practice of resources and environmental sciences worldwide.

Multimorbidity in the Elderly: A Systematic Bibliometric Analysis of Research Output

Objective: This study aimed to analyze the progression and trends of multimorbidity in the elderly in China and internationally from a bibliometric perspective, and compare their differences on hotspots and research fronts. Methods: Publications between January 2001 and August 2021 were retrieved from WOS and CNKI databases. Endnote 20 and VOSviewer 1.6.8 were used to summarize bibliometric features, including publication years, journals, and keywords, and the co-occurrence map of countries, institutions, and keywords was drawn. Results: 3857 research papers in English and 664 research papers in Chinese were included in this study. The development trends of multimorbidity in the elderly are fully synchronized in China and other countries. They were divided into germination period, development period, and prosperity period. Research literature in English was found to be mainly focused on public health, and the IF of the literature is high; In China, however, most research papers are in general medicine and geriatrics with fewer core journals. Co-occurrence analysis based on countries and institutions showed that the most productive areas were the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, while the Chinese researchers have made little contribution. The clustering analysis of high-frequency keywords in China and around the globe shows that the hotspots have shifted from individual multimorbidity to group multimorbidity management. Sorting out the top 10 highly cited articles and highly cited authors, Barnett, K’s article published in Lancet in 2012 is regarded as a milestone in the field. Conclusion: Multimorbidity in the elderly leads to more attention in the world. Although China lags behind global research the research fronts from disease-centered to patient-centered, and individual management to population management is consistent.

Funding Sources in Russian-authored Papers in Leading International Journals: the Case of Medicine

We present results of a pioneering survey of funding sources in papers with Russian affiliations published in highly cited international journals in 2010-2020 in the area of medicine and health sciences. We identify major funders both from Russia and abroad, from government, for-profit and non-profit sectors, and conflate them with advanced bibliometric indicators and techniques including author-level fractional counting. We also uncover sectoral differences regarding funding sources for universities and non-teaching institutions. Amongst other findings it is shown that Russian state sources, which were lagging behind foreign, are gaining the lead since 2015, but the Russian-funded papers still tend to have less citations, and lessinternational co-authors. Such results are important for science studies and science policy.

Webology: An Analysis of Citation Pattern

Efforts were made to analyze 5807 citations of Webology published during 2004 to 2019. The citations were classified on the basis of type of material which clearly indicates that periodicals and web resources were the most popular type of resources used by the authors for writing research papers. The study found that out of 5807 citations 2580 citations were authored by the single author and single authorship pattern was found as the most popular authorship pattern among the authors. The study founds the two oldest citations were from the books which were published before 1900. The findings of the study show the notable change in the use of type of resources being used for writing the research papers. The results of the study shoes that use the of periodicals and web resources for writing research papers was increased from 1951 and onward. The study also presented the list of the twenty five highly cited journals, ten highly cited authors, fifteen highly cited web links and five highly cited books.

Top 100 Most Cited Studies in Obesity Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

Obesity represents a major global public health problem. In the past few decades the prevalence of obesity has increased worldwide. In 2016, an estimated 1.9 billion adults were overweight; of these more than 650 million were obese. There is an urgent need for potential solutions and deeper understanding of the risk factors responsible for obesity. A bibliometric analysis study was designed to provide a comprehensive overview of top 100 most cited studies on obesity indexed in Web of Science database. The online search was conducted on June 6, 2021 using the keywords “Obesity” OR “Obese” OR “Overweight” in title filed with no limitations on document types or languages. The top 100 cited studies were selected in descending order based on number of citations. The obtained data were imported in to Microsoft Excel 2019 to extract the basic information such as title, authors name, journal name, year of publication and total citations. In addition, the data were also imported in to HistCite™ for further citation analysis, and VOSviewer software for windows to plot the data for network visualization mapping. The initial search retrieved a total of 167,553 documents on obesity. Of the total retrieved documents, only top 100 most cited studies on obesity were included for further analysis. These studies were published from 1982 to 2017 in English language. Most of the studies were published as an article (n = 84). The highly cited study on obesity was “Establishing a standard definition for child overweight and obesity worldwide: international survey” published in BMJ-British Medical Journal (Impact Factor 39.890, Incites Journal Citation Reports, 2021) in 2000 cited 10,543 times. The average number of citations per study was 2,947.22 (ranging from 1,566 to 10,543 citations). Two studies had more than 10,000 citations. A total of 2,272 authors from 111 countries were involved. The most prolific author was Flegal KM authored 14 studies with 53,558 citations. The highly active country in obesity research was United States of America. The included studies were published in 33 journals. The most attractive journal was JAMA-Journal of the American Medical Association (Impact Factor 56.272) published 17 studies and cited globally 51,853 times. The most frequently used keywords were obesity (n = 87) and overweight (n = 22). The countries with highest total link strength was United States of America (n = 155), followed by England (n = 140), and Scotland (n = 130). Our results show that most number of highly cited studies were published in developed countries. The findings of this study can serve as a standard benchmark for researchers to provide the quality bibliographic references and insights into the future research trends and scientific cooperation in obesity research.

Methodology of Writing Literature Review on Management and Business: Digest of Overseas Highly-Cited Articles

The goal of the research is to elaborate methodology how to systematize findings in the field of management published during previous years. Special attention is paid to typology of reviews. In this case the author distinguished systematic (meta-analysis as its variant), semi-systematic, integrative and other types of reviews. The article traces the origin of literature reviews starting from medical science to their use in articles concerning management in business. The author described difficulties of conducting meta-analysis and systematic analysis on materials of research on management and showed several methods of presenting results of systematic review of literature. Review articles can both rely on proofs obtained in previous quality (or mixed) methods of research and include quantitative data. Orientation to author is also possible. The most widely used type is a subject review, where researcher describes publications fostering the development of general comprehension of the concept or phenomenon being of interest, including for the future research. The choice of the review type and methodology of its conducting is determined by the data that should be analyzed. Authors should follow the chosen methodology.