Dataset Information

Current use of medical eponyms--a need for global uniformity in scientific publications.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Although eponyms are widely used in medicine, they arbitrarily alternate between the possessive and nonpossessive forms. As very little is known regarding extent and distribution of this variation, the present study was planned to assess current use of eponymous term taking "Down syndrome" and "Down's syndrome" as an example. METHODS:This study was carried out in two phases - first phase in 1998 and second phase in 2008. In the first phase, we manually searched the terms "Down syndrome" and "Down's syndrome" in the indexes of 70 medical books, and 46 medical journals. In second phase, we performed PubMed search with both the terms, followed by text-word search for the same. RESULTS:In the first phase, there was an overall tilt towards possessive form - 62(53.4%) "Down's syndrome" versus 54(46.6%) "Down syndrome." However, the American publications preferred the nonpossesive form when compared with their European counterpart (40/50 versus 14/66; P < 0.001). In the second phase, PubMed search showed, compared to "Down syndrome," term "Down's syndrome" yielded approximately 5% more articles. The text-word search of both forms between January 1970 and June 2008 showed a gradual shift from "Down's syndrome" to "Down syndrome," and over the last 20 years, the frequency of the former was approximately halved (33.7% versus 16.5%; P < 0.001). The abstracts having possessive form were mostly published from the European countries, while most American publications used nonpossesive form consistently. CONCLUSION:Inconsistency in the use of medical eponyms remains a major problem in literature search. Because of linguistic simplicity and technical advantages, the nonpossessive form should be used uniformly worldwide.

SUBMITTER: Jana N

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2667526 | biostudies-other | 2009 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Current use of medical eponyms--a need for global uniformity in scientific publications.

Jana Narayan N Barik Sukumar S Arora Nalini N

BMC medical research methodology 20090309

<h4>Background</h4>Although eponyms are widely used in medicine, they arbitrarily alternate between the possessive and nonpossessive forms. As very little is known regarding extent and distribution of this variation, the present study was planned to assess current use of eponymous term taking "Down syndrome" and "Down's syndrome" as an example.<h4>Methods</h4>This study was carried out in two phases - first phase in 1998 and second phase in 2008. In the first phase, we manually searched the term ...[more]

PMID: 19272131

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundAn increasing number of studies on dexmedetomidine use in adults have been published, but the effectiveness of dexmedetomidine remains contentious.ObjectiveThis study aimed to describe the changing trends and structural relationships of scientific achievements regarding dexmedetomidine over the past 2 decades and provide researchers with information to help them explore better research opportunities.MethodsQuantitative data of publications were retrieved from the Scopus database. Analyses of co-occurrence and collaboration among authors, countries, and key words were conducted using VOSviewer 1.6.17 software. Weighted occurrence and average publications per year were calculated.ResultsThe 1868 publications retrieved showed an increasing trend of annual publications on dexmedetomidine use in adults between 2001 and 2021. China accounted for the largest contribution to publications in the world (n = 577 [30.89%]). Four key word clusters indicating research hotspots were identified using VOSviewer. The number of articles published in the top 10% of journals in the United States was the highest among all publications from the country (97 out of 201 [48.26%]). Journals from the United Kingdom obtained the highest CiteScore (16.56). Journal of Anaesthesiology Clinical Pharmacology published the highest number of articles on this topic (n = 56). Wang authored the highest number of published articles (n = 42). Recent publications focused on the theme of cytokines and immunomodulation. Sufentanil attracted particular interest as a drug-related key word. Moreover, meta-analysis is becoming an increasingly popular research method in this field.ConclusionsThe increasing number of publications on dexmedetomidine use reflects growing interest in this topic. Future research should focus on meta-analyses to identify the most effective therapeutic methods. The immunomodulatory effect of dexmedetomidine on health and disease is of particular interest.

Project description:In addition to its primary regulatory role, the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is engaged in many forms of scientific authorship. During the period of 2010 to 2018, FDA oncology staff contributed to 356 publications in the scientific literature. Here, we collaborated with analysts in the Office of Program Planning, Analysis, and Evaluation at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, National Institutes of Health (NIH), to present a series of analyses aimed at quantifying the characteristics and potential impact of these contributions, as well as characterizing the areas of work addressed. We found that FDA oncology papers are enriched for high-impact publications and have about two times the number of citations as an average NIH-funded paper. Further impact of the publications was measured based on the presence of 65 publications that were cited by guidelines and 12 publications cited by publicly listed clinical trials. The results seen here are promising in determining the impact of FDA oncology publication work but prompt further investigation into longer-term impacts, such as the influence of this work on other regulatory activities at FDA. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: This article describes the first comprehensive study of scientific publications produced by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oncology staff. The analysis illustrates that staff are highly engaged in publishing in the scientific literature in addition to completing regulatory review work. Publications are generally in clinical medicine, consistent with the large number of medical oncologists working at the Office of Hematology and Oncology Products (OHOP). OHOP publications generally focus either on communicating important regulatory work (approval summaries) or highlighting regulatory science issues to encourage dialogue with the scientific community (commentaries, reviews, and expert working papers). The analysis also suggests that several FDA oncology publications may influence clinical guidelines, but further work is needed to evaluate impact.

Dataset Information

Current use of medical eponyms--a need for global uniformity in scientific publications.

Publications

Current use of medical eponyms--a need for global uniformity in scientific publications.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets