Original research on Behçet's syndrome: a bibliometric analysis over 20 years (2000-2019)

Objective To perform a bibliometric analysis of original research articles on Behcet's syndrome (BS) published over the last 20 years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to systematically describe their characteristics and citation records. Methods PubMed database was searched for any article published on BS between 2000 and 2019. We identified all original research articles and categorised them by country of origin and type of research, i.e., clinical, translational and basic. Each article's impact was assessed using the individual citation numbers from Google Scholar search engine; we also calculated the median annual citation rates (ACRs), both per country and research type. Results Of a total of 2,381 retrieved original articles from 51 countries, the majority reported on clinical (52.6%), followed by translational (46.0%) and basic research (1.4%). Turkey had the highest number of publications (39% of articles) followed by four countries (Korea, China, Japan, Italy) where BS is also relatively prevalent. However, regarding median ACRs, France was first, followed by United Kingdom, Germany and Collaboration. Although the number of articles has almost doubled between 2010-2019 versus 2000-2009, median ACRs across either clinical or translational research had a downward trend. Conclusion Researchers from countries where BS is prevalent are more productive, albeit their work is of lower impact compared to countries with generally higher research budgets. A considerable increase of original research articles on BS is observed over time but further funding may be warranted for a parallel increase in the respective scientific impact.