Internationalization of Research Devoted to the Contemporary Diagnosis of Obstructive Sleep Apnea

Background: The purpose of this scientometric investigation was to analyze some features of the international scientific communications in the field of the diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea. Methods: The publication output on this interdisciplinary topic that had been reflected in three data-bases (Web of Science, MEDLINE and Scopus) for the period from 2009 till 2013 was analyzed. The following scientometric parameters were comparatively followed-up: number of abstracted publications; names and countries of authors; languages and types of primary documents; titles of journals, and citation counts. Results: In MEDLINE, there were 5120 items, in WoS - 5856 by authors from 72 countries and in Scopus - 1963 ones by authors from 65 countries from all over the world. In WoS, most papers were primarily published in 2012 (1396) and in 2009 (1138), while in MEDLINE and in Scopus - in 2013 (1168 and 481) and in 2012 (1088 and 419), respectively. Original articles prevailed followed by reviews. In WoS, primary publications were in 24 languages while in Scopus and in MEDLINE - in 25 ones each. English language significantly dominated followed by Chinese, German, Spanish, French, etc. First came the authors from the USA followed by those from Australia, Canada, Germany, Japan, etc. There were 86 papers by A. Malhotra abstracted in WoS, 64 ones by D. Gozal abstracted in MEDLINE and 20 ones by S. Tufik abstracted in Scopus. In WoS, the journals Sleep and Sleep & Breathing dominated, in MEDLINE - Sleep & Breathing and Sleep, and in Scopus - Sleep & Breathing and Sleep Medicine did. In WoS, the papers received 28232 citations, of which 21293 - without self-citations by 13734 citing articles, of which 11661 - without self-citations. The average citations per item were 4,82 and the average citations per year were 4033.14. The value of h-index was relatively high - of 53. Conclusion: The files with abstracts could contribute to further improvement of international collaboration between the scientists from leading and smaller countries.