National Representation in the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Literature

TLDR

Plastic and reconstructive surgery has experienced significant growth, yet the national contribution to the field remains unclear. The study aimed to uncover national contributions by extracting articles from the six top plastic and reconstructive surgery journals (2005‑2009) via Medline and Web of Science. The authors tabulated total articles, per‑capita counts, 5‑year impact factors, and citations for 5,745 papers published in the six journals between 2005 and 2009. North America, West Europe, and East Asia were the most productive regions, with high‑income countries publishing 79.72% of articles; the United States led with 35.07% of publications, highest 5‑year impact factor and citations, while Sweden had the highest per‑million‑person output, indicating that some European countries may be more productive when normalized to population.

Abstract

In recent years, significant growth has been observed in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery. However, the national productivity to the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery remains unknown. We therefore intended to reveal national contributions in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery.Articles published in the 6 highly cited journals in plastic and reconstructive surgery in 2005-2009 were retrieved from the Medline and Web of Science. The number of total articles, the per capita numbers, 5-year impact factors (5y-IF), and citations were tabulated to assess the contribution of different countries.A total number of 5745 articles were published in the 6 journals from 2005 to 2009 worldwide. North America, West Europe, and East Asia were the most productive regions. High-income countries published 79.72% of the total articles. United States (USA) published most of the articles during 2005 to 2009 (2015/5745, 35.07%), followed by United Kingdom, Turkey, Japan, and China. Besides, USA also had the highest total 5y-IF (5010.76), the highest mean 5y-IF (2.49), and the highest total citations (11,788). When normalized to population size, Sweden had the highest number of articles per million persons (12.26), followed by Switzerland (8.02) and Netherlands (7.77).USA is the most productive country in the field of plastic and reconstructive surgery. When normalized to population size, some European countries might be more productive.