PubFocus: semantic MEDLINE/PubMed citations analytics through integration of controlled biomedical dictionaries and ranking algorithm.
BACKGROUND
Understanding research activity within any given biomedical field is important. Search outputs generated by MEDLINE/PubMed are not well classified and require lengthy manual citation analysis. Automation of citation analytics can be very useful and timesaving for both novices and experts.


RESULTS
PubFocus web server automates analysis of MEDLINE/PubMed search queries by enriching them with two widely used human factor-based bibliometric indicators of publication quality: journal impact factor and volume of forward references. In addition to providing basic volumetric statistics, PubFocus also prioritizes citations and evaluates authors' impact on the field of search. PubFocus also analyses presence and occurrence of biomedical key terms within citations by utilizing controlled vocabularies.


CONCLUSIONS
We have developed citations' prioritisation algorithm based on journal impact factor, forward referencing volume, referencing dynamics, and author's contribution level. It can be applied either to the primary set of PubMed search results or to the subsets of these results identified through key terms from controlled biomedical vocabularies and ontologies. NCI (National Cancer Institute) thesaurus and MGD (Mouse Genome Database) mammalian gene orthology have been implemented for key terms analytics. PubFocus provides a scalable platform for the integration of multiple available ontology databases. PubFocus analytics can be adapted for input sources of biomedical citations other than PubMed.
Plikus
Maksim V
MV
Department of Pathology, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, USA. plikus@usc.edu
Zhang
Zina
Z
Chuong
Cheng-Ming
CM
D000465:Algorithms; D004018:Dictionaries, Medical as Topic; D016239:MEDLINE / Q000706:statistics & numerical data* / Q000639:trends; D039781:PubMed / Q000706:statistics & numerical data / Q000639:trends; D012660:Semantics; D012985:Software Design