Divergent Characteristics of Biomedical Research across Publication Types: A Quantitative Analysis on the Aging-related Research

TL;DR

This study interrogates how aging-related genetic research differs across PubMed publication types by analyzing bibliometric data from five model species. Using a random-effects framework to quantify aging-related publication fractions and a multi-faceted analysis of topics, genes, and journals, it demonstrates substantial publication-type–driven divergence in attention, topical focus, and gene scopes. The findings reveal that synthesis-type publications (meta-analyses and systematic reviews) and comparative studies emphasize aging more than evaluation or validation studies, while clinical studies skew toward translational genes. The work provides a data-driven map of knowledge production in a biomedical subdomain, with implications for data mining, scholarly evaluation, and cross-community communication.

Abstract

This paper investigates differences in characteristics across publication types for aging-related genetic research. We utilized bibliometric data for five model species retrieved from authoritative databases including PubMed. Publications are classified into types according to PubMed. Results indicate substantial divergence across publication types in attention paid to aging-related research, scopes of studied genes, and topical preferences. For instance, comparative studies and meta-analyses show a greater focus on aging than validation studies. Reviews concentrate more on cell biology while clinical studies emphasize translational topics. Publication types also manifest variations in highly studied genes, like APOE for reviews versus GH1 for clinical studies. Despite differences, top genes like insulin are universally emphasized. Publication types demonstrate similar levels of imbalance in research efforts to genes. Differences also exist in bibliometrics like authorship numbers, citation counts, etc. Publication types show distinct preferences for journals of certain topical specialties and scope of readership. Overall, findings showcase distinct characteristics of publication types in studying aging-related genetics, owing to their unique nature and objectives. This study is the first endeavor to systematically depict the inherent structure of a biomedical research field from the perspective of publication types and provides insights into knowledge production and evaluation patterns across biomedical communities.

Figures (15)

• Figure 1: We displayed the fraction of attention by seven important publication types, including research articles, reviews, comparative studies, meta-analyses & systematic reviews, evaluation studies, validation studies, and comments & letters & news, across five species in the funnel plots. The dashed lines in the middle of the subfigures represent the average attention to aging for one species. The large widths of the white “funnels” suggest a strong heterogeneity of attention among the seven publication types. The $I^2$ quantity, which represents the level of heterogeneity, is appended to the titles of subfigures.
• Figure 2: We displayed the Cook’s distance, which measures the amount of heterogeneity contributed by each publication type in the RE model, for the five species by removing each publication type out repeatedly.
• Figure 3: The co-occurrence maps (by VOSviewer) of research topics based on the texts of titles and abstracts of literature from four publication types. Each color refers to one cluster based on topical relevance.
• Figure 4: The heatmaps showing the overlaps of the scopes of gene studied in different publication types for Human (A), Mouse (B), Rat ( C), C.elegans(D) and Fly (E). The elements in heatmaps represent the proportion of the intersection of genes studied by the two publication types (indexed by the row and the column) concerning the total genes studied by one publication type (indexed by the row).
• Figure 5: Cumulative share of aging-related literature on human genes tagged in the filtered publications from PubMed for the four most common publication types (research articles, reviews, comparative studies, and clinical studies). Gene rank refers to the order of human genes according to the associated cumulative publication numbers. The gene with the most publication equivalents would have ranked 1. The share of total literature contributed by top 25%, 2.5%, and 10 genes are shaded. Note: for the fourth sub-figure the share of top ten genes is not shaded because the number 10 exceeds the number of 2.5% of total genes involved.