Bibliometric Analysis of the United Kingdom’s Contribution to Scientific Literature in the Field of Optometry

Abstract

History: Optometry is a young discipline undergoing expansion, in which English-speaking countries predominate in this scientific field. Purpose: We have conducted a bibliometric analysis of scientific publications of British researchers in the field of Optometry beginning from 1972 (date of first publications) until 2013, to compare its production with other countries. Methods: For this study, the EMBASE database was used using “optomtr*”, “optic*”, “visual”, “vision”, ”eye*” and “ophthalm*” as search terms. To the selected publications, we applied a series of bibliometric indicators such as Price’s law on the increase of scientific literature, the doubling time of production, Lotka’s law of scientific productivity, Price’s transience index, and Bradford’s Law of scattering of scientific literature, and the degree of collaboration among authors was also analysed. Furthermore, the scientific output was correlated with socio-medical data (per capita income and Health expenses). Results: The number of published articles retrieved for the period 1972–2013 was 3,331. The UK ranks second in optometric production. The growth of publications was more linear (r = 0.9093) than exponential (r = 0.8434). The doubling time of scientific production was 4.97. The level of productivity corresponded to medium-size producers (81.70%) and a transience index of 9.75%. %. The collaboration index is 87% and the degree of collaboration is 0.88. The collaboration index was 3.78. The Bradford core was formed by three journals with an impact factor greater than 2, in which Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics with 20.38% accumulated the greatest number of articles. Conclusions: English-speaking countries account for the majority of the production in Optometry. Research in the UK is in an established phase that shows linear growth in scientific output, as demonstrated by the low transience index and the high percentage of authors found to be medium-size producers. We found a high concentration of publications in a small number of journals.