Bibliometric analysis of global publication output and collaboration structure study in microRNA research

The study aimed to analyse the global research output related to microRNA (miRNA), based on the fact that it has diverse expression patterns and might regulate various developmental and physiological processes. First miRNA was identified as small RNA in 1993 but its function as biological regulator was unknown till 2000. Since then the research in miRNAs has got momentum. To understand and visualize the research dynamics and the research structure of the field, the publications appeared in Science Citation Index expanded database for 2002–2012 under miRNA category using specific search string, were analysed. A sum of more than 14,000 documents found from Web of Science database for the same period. This study detected major productive countries, high productive-institutions, authors, research areas, journals and document types, along with their individual citation impacts. The inter-collaborative linkages of countries, organizations and authors were also analysed. The study has observed that number of publication increased from 8 in 2002 to 4,186 in 2012 with compound annual growth rate of 87 %. The compound annual growth rates of countries, institutions, number of journals, research areas, and authors are 36.60, 76.64, 64.80, 30.5, and 88.09 % respectively.