Trends in MSF research publications Louise
1 Bishop ,
1Médecins
David
2 Bridgman-Packer ,
Patricia
Sans Frontières (MSF), London, UK;
2 Kahn ,
2MSF,
Sarah
1 Venis
New York, USA
Introduction
Results: historical data
Results: 2012 analysis
Limitations
MSF has a long history of publishing research carried out in its programmes around the world.
The field research website lists 1034 publications between 1988 and 2012.
In 2012, MSF published 147 articles in peer-reviewed journals.
Some publications by MSF authors might have been missed; the 2012 data are more accurate and complete than the entire dataset of MSF articles as the algorithm used to identify MSF papers has improved over time.
Increasing numbers of articles are being published in open access journals.
However there has been no pan-organisational analysis of trends over time in the published outputs of MSF research. This analysis seeks to: Quantify and summarise research publications to provide an historical overview of trends in published MSF research Provide an in-depth view of medical publishing activity in 2012
HIV and tuberculosis (TB) are the most common topics in recent years. Fewer than 2% of articles were published in a language other than English. Number of MSF publications by year archived on the field research website number of publications
140
Methods Historical data The total number of papers published each year was extracted from MSF’s field research website1, which provides free access to the full text of published MSF articles. All peer-reviewed publications categorised as “published research and commentary” were included (research articles, reviews, editorials, letters).
However, 3% of papers did not transfer, and 15% of papers did not have any keywords. This may relate to article type (e.g. correspondence is not usually assigned keywords), or journal (e.g. there were no keywords from papers published in Conflict and Health).
100 80
Disease # articles HIV/AIDS (no TB) 40 Tuberculosis (no HIV) 39 HIV/AIDS and Tuberculosis 10 Malnutrition 10 Malaria 6 Non-Communicable Disease 6 Surgery/Trauma 6 Cholera 5 Visceral Leishmaniasis 5 Infections, Viral 4 Mental Health 4 Infections, Other 3 Sleeping Sickness 3 Diarrheal Diseases (non-Cholera) 1 Meningitis 1 Buruli Ulcer 0 Chagas 0 Measles 0
60 40
0
n=147
Commentary 24% Metaanalysis, 6%
Research 61%
Review, 5% Short report, 4%
Journals in which MSF published most frequently in 2012 PLoS One (25 articles) – open access Public Health Action (13) – open access Tropical Medicine & International Health (12) – hybrid PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases (7) – open access International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease (7) – free after 6 months
year of publication
Trends in journal of publication, by type of access 60
n=147
50 40 30
Hybrid journals* 31%
20
Full open access 54%
10 Other, 4%
In analysis of trends in open versus closed access publication, journals were classified according to their access policy in 2012 since data were not available on earlier policies.
Free after 6 months, 5% No Free Access, 6%
open
hybrid
free after six months
no free access
other
Publications by country†:
*Hybrid journals offer authors open access (OA) for a fee (similar to full OA journals, although often more expensive). Examples: Tropical Medicine & International Health, AIDS, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Journal of Infectious Diseases.
80 articles (54%) were published in exclusively OA journals. Another 45 articles (31%) were in hybrid journals; authors chose OA for only 5 of these 45 articles.
Trends in frequency of seven author keywords: MSF publications 2000-2012
2012 data 40
HIV (not TB)
20
tuberculosis (not HIV) tuberculosis and HIV mental health
15
nutrition
30 25
10 5 0
visceral leishmaniasis malaria
Conclusions There has been more than a 10-fold increase in MSF’s peer-reviewed publications over the past twenty years. Operational areas other than HIV/TB account for a substantial portion of MSF’s medical humanitarian programmes but are under-represented in publications. The field research website is a useful repository that makes MSF research freely available and provides a record of MSF publications over time. However, additional tools and resources are needed to provide an in-depth view of MSF research activity. As there is no centralized process for MSF publications, identifying MSF articles in medical literature requires significant effort. Collecting additional information such as country and type of publication, and assigning a topic from a fixed list, as in the 2012 analysis, provides useful and detailed information about the extent of MSF research, but is time-intensive. While publication in“ Hybrid” journals is common, MSF rarely pays to make these articles open access. In certain cases the field research database can nevertheless obtain permission from publishers to archive these articles, but this is only a partial replacement for open access: authors lack copyright and articles receive less exposure than if they are freely available from journals. Trends in the frequency of publication topics seem to mirror rises and falls in MSF advocacy priorities in some topics such as malaria, HIV and TB but not in others.
35
number
Articles with an MSF-affiliated author and published in electronically-available, peer-reviewed journals were included. Country and topic keywords were assigned from a controlled vocabulary list. Analysis was done in Microsoft Excel 2007.
The historical data rely on author keywords; while this may reduce systematic bias there is variation between authors. Additionally, each paper typically has many keywords, some of which may only relate in a minor way to the content.
Journal Accessibility:
0
MSF publications were collected in an internal database using Microsoft Access 2007. Articles were identified through Google Scholar, PubMed and internal communications in MSF.
% total 28% 27% 7% 7% 4% 4% 4% 3% 3% 3% 3% 2% 2% 1% 1% 0% 0% 0%
2012 publications represented a diverse mix of original research, meta-analysis, review articles, and short reports. HIV/AIDS and TB accounted for the majority of publications (62%), as in past years.
20
number of publications
Information on these papers was exported using the bibtex format to Mendeley2, a free online reference manager. This links the reference with the online article, and automatically extracts authors’ keywords.
120
Publication topics and article types:
This analysis shows publication trends but additional tools and approaches are needed to assess the impact of MSF publications, such as whether they led to changes in treatment protocols or policy. MSF publications incorporated data from 54 countries. 75% of data sets or country mentions were from Sub-Saharan Africa. †
Meta-analyses and review articles were not included in this analysis. All research conducted in Sudan either took place in northern Sudan or was completed prior to South Sudan’s independence.
References 1
http://fieldresearch.msf.org/msf/;
2 http://www.mendeley.com/