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. 2023 Feb 22;102(8):e33057.
doi: 10.1097/MD.0000000000033057.

Using chord diagrams to explore article themes in 100 top-cited articles citing Hirsch's h-index since 2005: A bibliometric analysis

Yei-Soon Lee  1 , Julie Chi Chow  2   3 , Tsair-Wei Chien  4 , Willy Chou  5   6
Affiliations

Using chord diagrams to explore article themes in 100 top-cited articles citing Hirsch's h-index since 2005: A bibliometric analysis

Yei-Soon Lee et al. Medicine (Baltimore). .

Abstract

Background: The h-index is increasingly being used as a measure of individual research achievement (IRA). More than 4876 citing articles have been published and indexed in Web of Science. The articles citing the h-index that have made the greatest contribution to scientific academics are still unknown. It is also unclear which subject categories (SCs) can be classified based on their keywords.

Methods: These 4976 citing articles have been collected from the Web of Science since 2005. SCs were classified using chord diagrams to visualize their associations of SCs and documents in 100 top-cited articles (T100hciting). In addition to chord diagrams, 6 visualizations were used to illustrate study results: choropleth maps were used to depict the geographical distribution of publications across countries, network diagrams were created by using coword analysis, box plots were created to complement the network diagrams, Sankey diagrams highlighted the 5 most important elements in each article entity, the dot plot was used for displaying T100hciting, and a radar plot was used to present the top 10 high-IRA elements of countries, institutes, departments, and authors based on category, journal impact factor, authorship, and L-index scores.

Results: A coword cluster analysis indicates that the majority of articles come from the US (918, 18%) and China (603, 12%), the top 2 SCs are h-index and bibliometric analysis, and the top 5 countries account for 55% in T100hciting, such as the US (25%), Spain (10%), Netherlands (9%), China (6%), and Belgium (5%). In T100hciting, 4 SCs are included, namely, the h-index (72%), bibliometric analysis (24%), physics & multidisciplinary (3%), and infectious diseases (1%).

Conclusion: A total of 7 visualizations were used to display the results in this study. Chord diagrams are suggested as a tool for future bibliographical studies to classify SCs Future bibliometrics with chord diagrams should not be limited to the topic of h-index-citing articles, as we did in this study.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no funding and conflicts of interest to disclose.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Characteristics of the 4 major visualizations commonly used in bibliometrics in comparison of features applied to this study.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Based on first authors (A) and author collaborations in countries (B), the geographic distribution of counts by articles referenced to the h-index for countries of origin is presented. In each cluster, the representative bubble is outlined in the same color as the largest bubble.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Coword analysis of keywords plus in WoS to obtain 10 major themes using social network analysis in comparison of distribution of counts in clusters using the box plot. WoS = Web of Science.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Mapping themes with counties of origin using the chord diagram from right side to left side (note: cluster Pakistan in relation to bibliometric analysis only, other top 10 countries with the h-index).
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Author collaboration based on countries of origin displayed by a circle SNA and a box plot in comparison of their mean WCD. SNA = social network analysis, WCD = weighted centrality degree.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
The top 10 elements with higher CJAL scores shown on the 4-quadratn radar plot based on the La index(note. details about information are linked to Google Maps once the QR-code is clicked). CJAL = category, journal impact factor, authorship, and L-index.
Figure 7.
Figure 7.
One-by-one relations in publication counts with top elements within each entity from top to bottom using the Sankey diagram (note: the thickness of edge means the stronger relation between 2 adjacent elements; the red curves indicate the strongest relation in the similar column edges).
Figure 8.
Figure 8.
Mapping themes with T100 h citing articles using the chord diagram (note: bibliometric analysis (24%), h-index (72%), infectious diseases (1%), physics, and multidisciplinary (3%)) (note: articles on quadrants I, III, and IV are redirected and assigned to themes on quadrant II).
Figure 9.
Figure 9.
T100hciting on the IBP (note: red dots indicate articles related to the theme of the h-index; when clicking on the dot, the article will link to WoS). IBP = impact beam plot, WoS = Web of Science.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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