Chinese research into severe ulcerative colitis has increased in quantity and complexity

Luo, Cheng-Xin; Wen, Zhong-Hui; Zhen, Yu; Wang, Zhu-Jun; Mu, Jing-Xi; Zhu, Min; Ouyang, Qin; Zhang, Hu

Bibliometric analysis is widely used to assess the performance of the research programs of institutions and/or countries. Research productivity and research influence are important bibliometric indicators that can be measured by the number of publications and subsequent citations [24] . We performed a bibliometric analysis of Chinese SUC research using both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The number of publications about UC and SUC both experienced a significant increase over the 15 year study period. This temporal change is similar to the trends in IBD publications archived in PubMed between 1993 and 2011, as reported by Weintraub et al [25] . This may be attributable to the increased prevalence of UC, improved diagnostic methods, physician awareness of the disease, increased interest, and the spread of internet access [26, 27] . Accompanied with the increasing output of SUC research, we also observed a significant increase in the number of analytical studies and clinical trials, which are more complex in study designs and are stronger in terms of the strength of evidence than descriptive studies [20] . Above all, this study has demonstrated that there has been a significant increase in publication output and research complexity on SUC in Chinese scholarly journals. This implied that there was a correlated increased in the prevalence of UC and SUC disease resulting in a subsequent increase in UC/SUC associated research in China.