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169 years of medical research: An analysis of the temporal trends in the BMJ Archive

Thorat, M; Thorat, P; Vaidya, H; Vaidya, JS; (2010) 169 years of medical research: An analysis of the temporal trends in the BMJ Archive. BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.) , 341 10.1136/bmj.c3306. Green open access

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Abstract

Background: Archives of the British Medical Journal are now available as an electronic database and articles published in the BMJ could be used to capture the historical trends of interest in medical subjects over past 170 years, we sought to study some of these trends. Method: We selected 10 search terms: 4 communicable diseases, 4 non- communicable diseases, and 2 interventions and used ‘advanced search’ feature of the BMJ archive. Keywords were searched for in either the title or abstract of the article. From the results displayed, a further manual search for research articles was made. Results: Non-communicable diseases show significant increase in the number of articles in the second half of 20th century. Number of research articles on communicable diseases show fluctuations coinciding with the epidemics of respective diseases. Increase in the number of research articles for certain diseases is preceded by a large increase in non -research articles. Conclusion: Publication of articles in the BMJ very closely reflects the changes in the disease patterns, magnitude and in their treatments and trends in BMJ publications may also predict future research activity/publications.

Type: Article
Title: 169 years of medical research: An analysis of the temporal trends in the BMJ Archive
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1136/bmj.c3306
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.c3306
Additional information: This is the authors' accepted version of this published article.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Surgery and Interventional Sci
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Div of Surgery and Interventional Sci > Department of Targeted Intervention
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/171302
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