title: Ireland's contribution to orthopaedic literature: a bibliometric analysis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Bibliometric analysis of scientific performance within a country or speciality, facilitate the recognition of factors that may further enhance research activity and performance. Our aim was to illicit the current state of Irelands orthopaedic research output in terms of quantity and quality.
  
  
  METHODS
  We performed a retrospective bibliometric analysis of all Irish orthopaedic publications over the past 5 years, in the top 20 peer-reviewed orthopaedic journals. Utilising the MEDLINE database, each journal was evaluated for articles that were published over the study period. Reviews, editorials, reports and letters were excluded. Each article abstract was analysed for research content, and country of origin. A nation's mean IF was defined by multiplying each journal's IF by the number of articles. Publications per million (PmP) was calculated by dividing the total number of publications by the population of each country.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We analysed a total of 25,595 article abstracts. Ireland contributed 109 articles in total (0.42% of all articles), however ranking according to population per million was 10th worldwide. Ireland ranked 18th worldwide in relation to mean impact factor, which was 2.91 over the study period. Ireland published in 16 of the top 20 journals, 9 of these were of European origin, and 1 of the top 5 was of American origin. In total, 61 Irish articles were assignable to clinical orthopaedic units. Clinical based studies (randomised controlled trials, observational, and epidemiology/bibliometric articles) and research based studies (In vivo, In vitro, and biomechanical) numbered 76 (69.7%) and 33 (30.2%) articles, respectively.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study provides a novel overview of current Irish orthopaedic related research, and how our standards translate to the worldwide orthopaedic community. In order to maintain our publication productivity, academic research should continue to be encouraged at post graduate level.
authors: Department of Trauma and Orthopaedics, Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda Co., Louth, Republic of Ireland. Electronic address: Ciankennedy05@gmail.com.
authors: C
authors: C
authors: Kennedy
authors: P
authors: P
authors: O Sullivan
authors: M
authors: M
authors: Bilal
authors: A
authors: A
authors: Walsh
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D006801:Humans; D007494:Ireland; D009985:Orthopedics; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011643:Publishing / Q000639:trends*; D012189:Retrospective Studies
keywords: Bibliometric analysis; Orthopaedics; Publication productivity