Discussion
Bibliometric science is ever growing and establishing itself as an accurate way of estimating and portraying both scholar productivity for itself, assessing different variables connected to academic productivity or showing non-partial and affective way of critiquing one’s scientific output’s quality and quantity.
As ORL-HNS is a field of medicine that interphases with numerous other medical disciplines, advancements in ORL-HNS may have an effect in Oncology, Neurology, Endocrinology, Maxillofacial surgery and even Paediatrics. Therefore, many patients and medical teams can profit from research in this medical field. With a constant need in new research and development in the field of ORL-HNS, the data portrayed in this study shed an important light on the connection of economic investment in research and research output.
In this current study, we have examined the association between economic and bibliometric indicators in ORL-NHS scholar productivity of the different OECD countries and examined the association between said indicators. As far as we know, this is the most updated and broad study in ORL-HNS scientometrics to date.
As we’ve compared the various OCED countries regions there seemed to by a constant different between several bibliometric indices in Eastern Europe and almost all other region for the exception of Latin America. Moreover, a consistent difference was evident in H index, which is, as stated above considered to be the gold standard of scientometrics. This tendency is further fortified by the significant difference seen in native English versus non-native English-speaking countries, with an overall difference in both H index and number of citations. this leaning was shown in the past, though not as significantly in other medical fields by our group. These said differences may be attributed to both economic investments and to the fact that the leading language in global academics is in fact English, which may cause a publication barrier for non-native academics.
When valuating said bibliometric data against economic parameters, a strong correlation is seen between health expenditure as calculated for 2018 as percentage of the GDP and H index, a moderate correlation is seen between health expenditure and all other bibliometric data as well as between the GERD and all bibliometric parameters. Furthermore, we can state that the H index, our gold standard for scientometrics data as mentions previously, is moderately to strongly connected to any of the economic indicators examined in our study. When referring to GDP per capita, the indicator which is, out of our economic parameters, least directly linked to medical investment is where whiteness the weakest correlations with only two parameters with a significant link; citations (weak correlation) and H index (a moderate correlation).
There are several drawbacks to our study, one being the fact that the number of publications is not adjusted to the population size or number of ORL-NHS surgeons per country, data that may have significance when assessing absolute bibliometric parameters such as the number of publications or total citations. Furthermore, when evaluating large countries such as the United States there is no state-to-state breakdown, and the variations between states may be of scientific importance. Nonetheless, our comparison does allow to review the United States contribution as a whole, and its’ impact on global research, and allows to assess each country’s contribution regardless to its’ size. Another limitation is the use of solemnly open sources, which are not always updated at the time of data collection (GDP per capita, 2018; health expenditure, 2018; GERD, latest updated). However, we believe that the still provide a satisfactorily accurate reflection of each of the OECD countries economic averages and are sufficient to prove the conclusions conducted in this article. Another drawback of the study is that it differs only to the OECD countries, and the conclusions made in it may not be generalised to the rest of the worlds’ countries. In spite of this, using only OECD countries provided us with a precise data collection and made its results more valid.
As bibliometrics is crucial to accurately demonstrating scholar productivity, the results of our study enhance the importance of health expenditure and investment in science as a catalysator for academic advancement in the field of ORL-HNS, more so than general economic variables as is the GDP per capita. This assumption, mainly of health expenditure, was proven in the past in different medical fields such as Cardiology and Rheumatology. We assume that in wealthy healthcare systems, affluent with manpower and advanced infrastructure, there is more time and means for conducting research. In addition, one can argue that as clinical research is integrated with the daily medical practice, investment in health indirectly results in investment in health academics.