Interdisciplinary, interinstitutional and international collaboration of family medicine researchers in Taiwan.
The family medicine researches flourished worldwide in the past decade. However, the collaborative patterns of family medicine publications had not been reported. Our study analyzed the collaborative activity of family medicine researchers in Taiwan. We focused on the types of collaboration among disciplines, institutions and countries. We searched "family medicine" AND "Taiwan" in address field from Web of Science and documented the disciplines, institutions and countries of all authors. We analyzed the collaborative patterns of family medicine researchers in Taiwan from 2010 to 2014. The journal's impact factor of each article in the same publication year was also retrieved. Among 1,217 articles from 2010 to 2014, interdisciplinary collaboration existed in 1,185 (97.3%) articles, interinstitutional in 1,012 (83.2%) and international in 142 (11.7%). Public health was the most common collaborative discipline. All international researches were also interdisciplinary and interinstitutional. The United States (75 articles), the United Kingdom (21) and the People's Republic of China (20) were the top three countries with which family medicine researchers in Taiwan had collaborated. We found a high degree of interdisciplinary and interinstitutional collaboration of family medicine researches in Taiwan. However, the collaboration of family medicine researchers in Taiwan with family medicine colleagues of other domestic or foreign institutions was insufficient. The future direction of family medicine studies could focus on the promotion of communication among family medicine researchers.
Division of Family Medicine, Taipei Hospital, Ministry of Health and Welfare , New Taipei City , Taiwan ; Department of Family Medicine, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University , Taipei , Taiwan.
Yi-Hsuan
YH
Lin
Chest Department, Taipei Veterans General Hospital , Taipei , Taiwan ; School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University , Taipei , Taiwan.
Yen-Han
YH
Tseng
Department of Family Medicine, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University , Taipei , Taiwan ; Department of Family Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital , Taipei , Taiwan.
Hsiao-Ting
HT
Chang
Department of Family Medicine, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University , Taipei , Taiwan ; Department of Family Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital , Taipei , Taiwan.
Ming-Hwai
MH
Lin
School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University , Taipei , Taiwan ; Department of Surgery, Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital, Pingtung Branch , Pingtung , Taiwan.
Yen-Chiang
YC
Tseng
Department of Family Medicine, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University , Taipei , Taiwan ; Department of Family Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital , Taipei , Taiwan ; Institute of Hospital and Health Care Administration, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University , Taipei , Taiwan.
Tzeng-Ji
TJ
Chen
Department of Family Medicine, School of Medicine, National Yang-Ming University , Taipei , Taiwan ; Department of Family Medicine, Taipei Veterans General Hospital , Taipei , Taiwan.
Shinn-Jang
SJ
Hwang
Collaboration; Family medicine; Research; Taiwan