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How Biomedical Research Can Inform Both Clinicians and the General Public

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Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators

Part of the book series: Springer Handbooks ((SHB))

Abstract

This study involved the collection of clinical practice guidelines ( s) on five noncommunicable disease (NCD) areas from 21 European countries, and extraction of their evidence base in the form of papers in journals processed on the Web of Science ( ). We analyzed these cited papers to see how their geographical provenance compared with European research in the respective subjects and found that European research (and that from the USA, Australia, and New Zealand) was over-cited compared with that from East Asia. In cancer, surgery and radiotherapy research made important contributions to the CPGs.

We also collected medical research stories from 30 newspapers from 22 European countries and the WoS papers that they cited. There was a heavy emphasis on cancer, particularly breast cancer, and its epidemiology, genetics, and prognosis, but new treatment methods were seldomly reported, particularly surgery and radiotherapy. Some of the stories quoted commentators, with those from the two UK newspapers often mentioning medical research charities, which thereby gained much free publicity.

Both sets of cited research papers showed a marked tendency to be over-cited by documents from their countrymen; the ratio was higher the smaller the country's contribution to research in the subject area.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the European Commission through the award of a contract to the London School of Economics and Political Science (EC/FP7/602536). It was very materially assisted by the provision of several VBA programs for use with MS Excel for the collection and analysis of data; these were written by Philip Roe of Evaluametrics Ltd. The CPGs and newspaper stories collection, and identification of the cited research studies from the newspapers, was done by the following individuals: for Austria, Germany, and Switzerland: Natalia Kelsch, Anne Spranger, Victor Stephani, and Tobias Schumacher from Technische Universität Berlin, Germany; for Belgium: Ann-Sophie de Mol and Gabrielle Emanuel from King's College London (KCL), UK; for Bulgaria: Eva Nacheva and Christina Tencheva from KCL; for Croatia: Ria Ivandic Emanuel from KCL; for Cyprus: Chryso T. Pallari from the University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus; for the Czech Republic and Poland: Kasia Zemanek from KCL; for Denmark: Maria Dahl and Maria Emilsson from KCL; for Estonia: Argo Soon from the Estonian Research Council, Tartu, Estonia; for Greece: Laura Mantovani from KCL; for Hungary: Csajbok Edit from Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary; for Italy: Ludovica Borsoi from Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi, Milan, Italy; for Latvia: Ingrid Jaselskyte, Estonian Research Council, Tartu, Estonia; for Luxembourg and the Netherlands: Ann-Sophie de Mol from KCL; for Portugal: Diana Gosálvez-Prados, Elisabeth María Ilidio-Paulo, Camila Higueras-Callejón, and José Carlos Ruiz-Jiménez from Escuela Andaluza de Salud Publica, Granada, Spain; for Romania: Maria-Cristina Juverdeanu from KCL; for Spain: Diana Gosálvez-Prados and Elena Salamanca-Fernández from Escuela Andaluza de Salud Publica, Granada, Spain and Tahereh Dehdarirad from Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain; for Sweden: Gustaf Nelhans from the University of Boras, Sweden; for the UK: Argo Soon, Marleen Saidla and Tiina Tasa (Estonia) and Eva Nacheva from KCL partly assisted EP on the datacollection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Implementation Science, Health Service & Population Research Department, King’s College London, London, UK

    Elena Pallari

  2. Division of Cancer Studies, King’s College London, London, UK

    Grant Lewison

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  1. Elena Pallari
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  2. Grant Lewison
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Correspondence to Elena Pallari .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. ECOOM and Faculty of Economics and Business, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Wolfgang Glänzel

  2. Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Henk F. Moed

  3. Competence Center Policy – Industry – Innovation, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe, Germany

    Ulrich Schmoch

  4. Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, UK

    Mike Thelwall

Appendix

Appendix

Table 22.B17 Organizations that publish CPGs in Europe
Full size table
Table 22.B17 (continued)
Full size table
Table 22.B17 (continued)
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Pallari, E., Lewison, G. (2019). How Biomedical Research Can Inform Both Clinicians and the General Public. In: Glänzel, W., Moed, H.F., Schmoch, U., Thelwall, M. (eds) Springer Handbook of Science and Technology Indicators. Springer Handbooks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02511-3_22

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