title: Inter-disease comparison of research quantity and quality: bronchial asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The two obstructive airway diseases bronchial asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) represent major global causes of disability and death. Whereas COPD research was largely underfunded in the 1980s and 1990s, increased funding activities have been initiated since the year 2000. However, detailed scientometric data on the development of research for asthma and COPD have not been generated so far.
  
  
  METHODS
  The present scientometric study was conducted to establish a database of research quantity and quality in the 20-year period between 1987 and 2006 using the Web of Science information system and the United Kingdom and Germany for comparison of research activities.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The information database Web of Science was screened and during the period from 1987 to 2006 a number of 8,874 items related to asthma was published by UK affiliations. Of these, 1,824 were published in cooperation with a total of 86 other countries. This is a ratio of 20.55%. In the same period, 3,341 items were published by German institutions (923 in cooperation with 56 other countries, ratio of 27.63%). Citation analysis demonstrated an average citation of 24.48 per UK article and 17.62 per German article. For COPD, 2,179 items were published by UK affiliations and 689 items by German institutions. Of the UK COPD publications, 570 were published in cooperations with 47 countries (ratio of 22.95 %). By contrast, 218 of the 689 German COPD articles were published with 29 other countries (ratio of 25.49%). When citation analysis was performed, average citation ratios of 18.93 for the UK and 10.61 for German were found.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Summarizing this first country-specific comparative benchmarking analysis for obstructive pulmonary diseases it can be concluded that (1) asthma research dominated in the past 20 years; (2) COPD research gained importance in the field since the end of the 1990s; (3) there are large differences present in the research output between the two high-income countries examined.
authors.affiliation: Otto-Heubner Centre, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Free University Berlin and Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany. Beatrix.groneberg-kloft@charite.de
authors.forename: Beatrix
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Groneberg-Kloft
authors.forename: Cristian
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Scutaru
authors.forename: Q Thai
authors.initials: QT
authors.lastname: Dinh
authors.forename: Tobias
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Welte
authors.forename: K Fan
authors.initials: KF
authors.lastname: Chung
authors.forename: Axel
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Fischer
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Quarcoo
mesh_terms: D001249:Asthma; D015706:Bibliometrics; D035843:Biomedical Research / Q000706:statistics & numerical data* / Q000639:trends; D016206:Databases, Bibliographic; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D007391:International Cooperation; D011642:Publications / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D029424:Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive; D006113:United Kingdom