Research on major depression in China: A perspective from bibliometric analysis
Introduction
As a leading cause of global disease burden (Global Health Data Exchange, 2019), major depressive disorder (MDD) has generated a rapidly growing body of scientific papers over time (Lipsman and Lozano, 2011). In recent years, studies on MDD conducted in China have increased dramatically (Yan et al., 2021; Yanan et al., 2020). However, many have been published in Chinese-language journals (Jing and Li, 2022; Shunwang et al., 2020; Yan et al., 2021), which are less accessible to international readers. MDD can be studied from a wide range of lenses and different levels. These include its biological underpinnings, clinical aspects, interaction with other disorders, psychosocial aspects, and the financial burden on health systems (Akechi et al., 2022; Pilmeyer et al., 2022; Shi-Jie et al., 2017; Tan and Goh, 2022). Overall research activity and trends can be better understood through bibliometrics, and this is true of MDD research. Bibliometrics, which can be defined as the application of statistical methods to publications (Pritchard, 1969), shows the development of ideas over time and particularly impactful papers. For example, Lipsman and Lozano identified 243 influential papers on MDD that received more than 400 citations each (Lipsman and Lozano, 2011). Since each citation represents a scientific paper, the number of citations serves as a proxy for the influence of a paper or author (Merediz-Sola and Bariviera, 2019; Podlubny, 2005).
Bibliometric analysis consists of performance analysis and science mapping (Donthu et al., 2021). The former represents the contributions of research constituents, such as the total publications/citations, journal sources, or the most contributing authors, while the technique of science mapping focuses on the relationships between research constituents. Bibliometric data can be visualized through networks of keywords, co-citations, and collaborative relationships between authors, journals, institutions, and countries (van Eck and Waltman, 2014). Networks of keywords reveal hotspots that represent themes in a given field. Currently, MDD-related themes derived from Chinese studies tend to focus on treatment methods (Chen and Shan, 2019; Tran et al., 2019; Xiang et al., 2021), prevalence (Lin et al., 2016; Zhao et al., 2021), and comorbidities (Hu et al., 2015; Zhou et al., 2021). To date, however, the overall development process and research characteristics of MDD-related research in China are not clear.
Building on previous bibliometric work, the present study aims to: (1) describe the research outputs and characteristics of MDD papers from China; (2) identify collaborations among authors, institutions and countries; (3) analyze keyword hotspots; and (4) identify differences between Chinese and English literature.
Section snippets
Study design, search strategy and selection criteria
Following previous methodology (Donthu et al., 2021; Xu et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2020), we retrieved bibliometric information from the Web of Sciences Core Collection (WoSCC) for MDD papers in English and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) for Chinese ones. WoSCC is the most widely-used international database with high numbers and quality of scientific publications (Zhang et al., 2020). As such, it is well-suited for citation analysis and is also interoperable with various
Study characteristics
There were 2,220 and 63,306 publications on MDD in WoS and CNKI, respectively between 1990 and 2021. The annual number of publications is presented in Fig. 1, indicating an increasing trend over time. For English papers, the number of citations also increased each year (Table S1). CNKI does not keep track of citations to Chinese papers. Based on the WoS, 17 countries/territories collaborated with China, with the USA (389; 17.5 %), Australia (148; 6.7 %) and the UK (112; 5.0 %) ranked as the top
Discussion
To the best of our knowledge, this was the first study to review the progress of MDD research in China in the past three decades. Overall, the number of scientific papers on MDD has increased annually. This is a positive sign—an indicator that this serious and complex disease has drawn the attention of China's medical and scientific community. This finding is in line with the growth of mental health research in China (Li and Zhang, 2014; Severino et al., 2021). The finding that the number of
Sources of funding
The study was supported by the National Science and Technology Major Project for investigational new drug (2018ZX09201-014), the Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Commission (No. Z181100001518005), and the University of Macau (MYRG2019-00066-FHS).
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Study design: Yu-Tao Xiang, Xiao-Hong Li, Yuan Feng.
Data collection, analysis and interpretation: Pan Chen, Wei Bai, Teris Cheung, Zhaohui Su.
Drafting the manuscript: Pan Chen, Wei Bai.
Critical revision of the manuscript: Lloyd Balbuena.
Approval of the final version for publication: all co-authors.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Acknowledgements
None.
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These authors contributed equally to the work.