ArticlebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology2023
The Size of Fields in Biomedical Sciences.
Article in bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
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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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Scientific research output has increased exponentially over the past few decades, but not equally across all fields of study, and we lack clear methods for estimating the size of any given field of research. Understanding how fields grow, change, and are organized is essential to understanding how human resources are allocated to the investigation of scientific problems. In this study we estimated the size of certain biomedical fields from the number of unique author names appearing in field relevant publications in the PubMed database. Focusing on microbiology, where the size of fields is often associated with those who work on a particular microbe, we find large differences in the size of its subfields. We found that plotting the number of unique investigators as a function of time can show changes consistent with growing or shrinking fields. We envision using unique author count to measure the strength of a workforce in any given field, analyze the overlap of workforce between fields, and compare how workforce correlates to available research funds and public health burden of a field.
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.