ArticleEnvironmental health : a global access science source2011
The Matthew effect in environmental science publication: a bibliometric analysis of chemical substances in journal articles.
Article in Environmental health : a global access science source, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Neurobehavioural effects of developmental toxicity.The Lancet. Neurology · 2014Pooled it
- Being Concerned with Substances of Concern: A Classification of Ethical Dilemmas in Circular Product Design.Science and engineering ethics · 2026Article
- NMR as a Discovery Tool: Exploration of Industrial Effluents Discharged Into the Environment.Magnetic resonance in chemistry : MRC · 2025Article
- Review
- Cross-cutting studies of per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) in Arctic wildlife and humans.The Science of the total environment · 2024Review
- How Many Chemicals in Commerce Have Been Analyzed in Environmental Media? A 50 Year Bibliometric Analysis.Environmental science & technology · 2023Review
- The top 100 most-cited articles on adult spinal deformity: The most popular topics are still sagittal plane parameters and complications.Frontiers in surgery · 2022Article
- Capturing a Comprehensive Picture of Biological Events From Adverse Outcome Pathways in the Drug Exposome.Frontiers in public health · 2021Article
- Next Generation Reproductive and Developmental Toxicology: Crosstalk Into the Future.Frontiers in toxicology · 2021Article
- What is useful research? The good, the bad, and the stable.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2020Article
- Integration of curated and high-throughput screening data to elucidate environmental influences on disease pathways.Computational toxicology (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2019Article
- Determination of chemical-disease risk values to prioritize connections between environmental factors, genetic variants, and human diseases.Toxicology and applied pharmacology · 2019Article
- Development priority.Basic & clinical pharmacology & toxicology · 2019Article
- Timescales of developmental toxicity impacting on research and needs for intervention.Basic & clinical pharmacology & toxicology · 2019Review
- Delayed discovery, dissemination, and decisions on intervention in environmental health: a case study on immunotoxicity of perfluorinated alkylate substances.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2018Article
- Spatial and topical imbalances in biodiversity research.PloS one · 2018Article
- Comparison of methods for calculating the health costs of endocrine disrupters: a case study on triclosan.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2017Article
- Minireview: Endocrine Disruptors: Past Lessons and Future Directions.Molecular endocrinology (Baltimore, Md.) · 2016Review
- Paracelsus Revisited: The Dose Concept in a Complex World.Basic & clinical pharmacology & toxicology · 2016Review
- Perfluorinated Alkyl Substances: Emerging Insights Into Health Risks.New solutions : a journal of environmental and occupational health policy : NS · 2015Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundWhile environmental research addresses scientific questions of possible societal relevance, it is unclear to what degree research focuses on environmental chemicals in need of documentation for risk assessment purposes.
methodsIn a bibliometric analysis, we used SciFinder to extract Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) numbers for chemicals addressed by publications in the 78 major environmental science journals during 2000-2009. The Web of Science was used to conduct title searches to determine long-term trends for prominent substances and substances considered in need of research attention.
resultsThe 119,636 journal articles found had 760,056 CAS number links during 2000-2009. The top-20 environmental chemicals consisted of metals, (chlorinated) biphenyls, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, benzene, and ethanol and contributed 12% toward the total number of links- Each of the top-20 substances was covered by 2,000-10,000 articles during the decade. The numbers for the 10-year period were similar to the total numbers of pre-2000 articles on the same chemicals. However, substances considered a high priority from a regulatory viewpoint, due to lack of documentation, showed very low publication rates. The persistence in the scientific literature of the top-20 chemicals was only weakly related to their publication in journals with a high impact factor, but some substances achieved high citation rates.
conclusionsThe persistence of some environmental chemicals in the scientific literature may be due to a 'Matthew' principle of maintaining prominence for the very reason of having been well researched. Such bias detracts from the societal needs for documentation on less well known environmental hazards, and it may also impact negatively on the potentials for innovation and discovery in research.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.