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. 2019 Jul 22;7(7):2325967119856883.
doi: 10.1177/2325967119856883. eCollection 2019 Jul.

Trends in Publications on the Anterior Cruciate Ligament Over the Past 40 Years on PubMed

Srinivas B S Kambhampati  1 , Raju Vaishya  2
Affiliations

Trends in Publications on the Anterior Cruciate Ligament Over the Past 40 Years on PubMed

Srinivas B S Kambhampati et al. Orthop J Sports Med. .

Abstract

Background: The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) is the most commonly operated ligament of the knee. Details on the top journals, universities, and authors on the topic would be helpful to identify the sources of information for clinical and research queries as well as to observe trends for future research and identify universities/authors of particular interest for training or to follow their research.

Purpose: To consolidate information from PubMed on the ACL from 1979 to 2018, spanning 40 years.

Study design: Cross-sectional study.

Methods: A search of the PubMed database was conducted for the ACL, and 18,696 articles published over the past 40 years were analyzed for further details. These details included the number of publications per year, top 10 journals publishing on the ACL, top 10 first authors publishing articles on the ACL, and number of articles published with specific keywords. Data were also sought from the Scopus database regarding the top universities and countries publishing on the ACL. The coauthorship of articles and co-occurrence of terms in titles were also analyzed using VOSviewer.

Results: There was a steady increase in the yearly average number of publications from 1979 to 2018. The top journal and top author publishing on the ACL were The American Journal of Sports Medicine and Freddie H. Fu, respectively. The most articles published by a first author were by K. Donald Shelbourne. Time-based links of Dr Fu to other authors were represented as VOSviewer output. Most occurrences of specific keywords in the title were also studied and listed. The United States was the most published country, and 8 of the top 10 universities that published were from this country.

Conclusion: There has been a steady increase in the number of articles published in PubMed since 1979. It appears that interest on the topic of the ACL has not decreased or stabilized but rather increased significantly over the past few years. This article quantifies the increased interest and could act as a baseline for future studies to compare.

Keywords: ACL; PubMed; anterior cruciate ligament; data mining; database search; knee; publication.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declared that there are no conflicts of interest in the authorship and publication of this contribution. AOSSM checks author disclosures against the Open Payments Database (OPD). AOSSM has not conducted an independent investigation on the OPD and disclaims any liability or responsibility relating thereto.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Number of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) publications by year.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Top 10 journals publishing on the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Top 10 first authors with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) publications. The number at the end of the short bar is the number of articles published when they are listed as the first author. The number within parentheses is the number of articles published by the author when they are listed as one of the authors.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Top 10 authors with most anterior cruciate ligament publications.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
VOSviewer output for all authors. The more prominent and more significant the author, the bigger the circle; and the more frequent the occurrence of the name, the greater number of publications. Color coding indicates that the publications were more frequent around 2010 and between 2010 and 2015, and color coding of the linked author indicates the predominant year of the link.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
VOSviewer output for Fu FH with links to other authors.
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
Most frequently occurring keywords related to the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in PubMed.
Figure 8.
Figure 8.
Top 10 languages for anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) publications.
Figure 9.
Figure 9.
Graft types used in anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACLR) over the past 40 years, based on analysis of article titles. ALL, anterolateral ligament.
Figure 10.
Figure 10.
Types of studies on the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) over the past 40 years, based on analysis of article titles.
Figure 11.
Figure 11.
Top 10 universities publishing on the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).
Figure 12.
Figure 12.
Top 10 countries publishing on the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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