Abstract
In times of globalisation, the future of bio-medicolegal sciences in Europe depends on the scientific community’s ability to develop new strategies for research, to introduce new and generally accepted standards, to develop new analytical methods, all in order to draw up inter-site, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary long-term research projects, eligible for European Union (EU) funding. To analyse the scientific output and to identify the topics of greatest interest and appeal in these sciences, an innovative method has been developed to select and analyse publications. This method has been applied to analyse a total of 21,176 records from PubMed out of which 5,826 papers were suitable for further analysis because they were published in national and international journals in the time between January 1, 2005 and June 1, 2010 by European authors in the field of interest. In 69% of all manuscripts, authors presented results of systematic research (original articles); 84% of the papers were written in English language. The cumulative impact factor increased from 1,670 points in 2005 to 1,878 in 2009, and extrapolated 2,812 points in 2010. The most frequent topics were the description of new analytical methods in forensic toxicology (5.7% of all papers), the analysis of short tandem repeat systems (STR, 5.6%) as well as the analysis of injury mechanisms in forensic pathology and clinical forensic medicine (4.9%). If the impact factor related potential of different topics is calculated (ratio of frequency of papers and frequency of impact points achieved), SIDS research reaches 1.64 points, followed by studies on mtDNA (1.59) and the development of new analytical methods in forensic toxicology (1.49). The findings made in the present bibliometric analysis reveal a clear and interesting overall picture of the European scientific production and productivity and could be used to identify the most innovative research lines.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ferrara SD, Bajanowski T, Cecchi R, Snenghi R, Case C, Viel G (2010) Bio-medicolegal guidelines and protocols: survey and future perspectives in Europe. Int J Legal Med 124:345–350
Kulkarni AV, Busse JW, Shams I (2007) Characteristics associated with citation rate of the medical literature. PLoS ONE 2:e403
Ferrara SD, Pfeiffer H (2010) Unitariness, evidence and quality in bio-medicolegal sciences. Int J Legal Med 124:343–344
Madea B, Saukko P (eds) (2008) Forensic medicine in Europe. Schmidt-Römhild Verlag, Lübeck
Brinkmann B, Cecchi R, Du Chesne A (1994) Legal medicine in Europe-Quo vadis? Int J Legal Med 107:57–59
Madea B, Saukko P (2007) Future in forensic medicine as an academic discipline—focussing on research. Forensic Sci Int 165:87–91
Pollak S (2004) Clinical forensic medicine and its main fields of activity from the foundation of the German Society of Legal Medicine until today. Forensic Sci Int 144:269–283
Falagas ME, Alexiou VG (2008) An analysis of trends in globalisation of origin of research published in major general medical journals. Int J Clin Pract 62:71–75
Jones AW (2007) The distribution of forensic journals, reflections on authorship practices, peer-review and role of the impact factor. Forensic Sci Int 165:115–128
Saukko P (2009) The role of international journals in legal/forensic medicine. Leg Med (Tokyo) 11(Suppl 1):S9–S12
Wieland S, Dickersin K (2005) Selective exposure reporting and Medline indexing limited the search sensitivity for observational studies of the adverse effects of oral contraceptives. J Clin Epidemiol 58:560–567
Garfield E (1996) How can impact factors be improved? BMJ 313:411–413
Callaham M, Wears RL, Weber E (2002) Journal prestige, publication bias, and other characteristics associated with citation of published studies in peer-reviewed journals. JAMA 287:2847–2850
Lee KP, Schotland M, Bacchetti P, Bero LA (2002) Association of journal quality indicators with methodological quality of clinical research articles. JAMA 287:2805–2808
Dickersin K, Scherer R, Suci ES, Gil-Montero M (2002) Problems with indexing and citation of articles with group authorship. JAMA 287:2772–2774
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Drs. Viviana Ananian, Amelia Boscia and Chiara Verdone for their precious technical and organisational contribution.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Ferrara, S.D., Bajanowski, T., Cecchi, R. et al. Bio-medicolegal scientific research in Europe: a comprehensive bibliometric overview. Int J Legal Med 125, 393–402 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-010-0538-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00414-010-0538-1