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. 2017 Jul 12:4:23.
doi: 10.1186/s40779-017-0131-8. eCollection 2017.

Knowledge mapping visualization analysis of the military health and medicine papers published in the web of science over the past 10 years

Xuan-Ming Zhang #  1 , Xuan Zhang #  1 , Xu Luo  1 , Hai-Tao Guo  1 , Li-Qun Zhang  2 , Ji-Wei Guo  1
Affiliations

Knowledge mapping visualization analysis of the military health and medicine papers published in the web of science over the past 10 years

Xuan-Ming Zhang et al. Mil Med Res. .

Abstract

Background: Military medicine is a research field that seeks to solve the medical problems that occur in modern war conditions based on public medicine theory.

Methods: We explore the main research topics of military health and medical research in the web of science™ core collection (WoSCC) from 2007 to 2016, and the goal of this work is to serve as a reference for orientation and development in military health and medicine. Based on CiteSpace III, a reference co-citation analysis is performed for 7921 papers published in the WoSCC from 2007 to 2016. In addition, a cluster analysis of research topics is performed with a comprehensive analysis of high-yield authors, outstanding research institutions and their cooperative networks.

Results: Currently, the research topics in military health and medicine mainly focus on the following seven aspects: mental health diagnoses and interventions, an army study to assess risk and resilience in service members (STARRS), large-scale military action, brain science, veterans, soldier parents and children of wartime, and wound infection. We also observed that the annual publication rate increased with time. Wessely S, Greenberg N, Fear NT, Smith TC, Smith B, Jones N, Ryan MAK, Boyko EJ, Hull L, and Rona RJ were the top 10 authors in military health and medicine research. The top 10 institutes were the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the United States Army, the United States Navy, Kings College London, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Boston University, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Naval Health Research Center, and the VA Boston Healthcare System.

Conclusions: We are able to perform a comprehensive analysis of studies in military health and medicine research and summarize the current research climate and the developmental trends in the WoSCC. However, further studies and collaborations are needed worldwide. Overall, our findings provide valuable information and new perspectives and shape future research directions for further research in the area of military health and medicine.

Keywords: CiteSpace; Knowledge mapping; Military health; Military medicine.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Not applicable.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Reference co-citation network mapping of the articles related to military health and medicine research published from 2007 to 2016 #0:Mental health diagnoses and interventions; #1: Army study to assess risk and resilience in service members (STARRS); #2: Large-scale military action; #3: Brain science; #4: Veterans; #5: Soldier parents and children of the wartime; #6: Wound infection; The co-citation network mapping (222) and the number of connection lines (754) were obtained. The network modularity value is 0.5769, which is between 0 and 1. A greater value indicates better modularity of the clustering network. Meanwhile, the Silhouette value is 0.3722, which is between −1 and 1. A larger Silhouette value indicates a clearer theme for each cluster
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Reference co-citation time-views mapping of articles related to military health and medicine research published from 2007 to 2016. The co-citation network mapping (222) and the number of connection lines (754) were obtained. The network modularity value is 0.5769, which is between 0 and 1, and a greater value indicates better modularity of the clustering network. Meanwhile, the Silhouette value is 0.3722, which is between −1 and 1. A larger Silhouette value indicates a clearer theme for each cluster
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Mapping of high-yield authors and cooperative networks of articles related to military health and medicine published from 2007 to 2016. The top 10 high-yield researchers in military health and medicine research are Wessely S, Greenberg N, Fear NT, Smith TC, Smith B, Jones N, Ryan MAK, Boyko EJ, Hull L, and Rona RJ. The nodes in the map represent the corresponding authors. The node size represents the number of all document types of literature published by the author in the WoSCC. The connection lines between the nodes represent the cooperative relationships between the authors in the field and the thickness of the lines is positively correlated to the cooperation between the authors. The color of the lines represents the time of the first cooperation between the two authors
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Top 10 authors with strongest citation bursts of military health and medicine research from 2007 to 2016. The top 10 ranked authors by bursts are Smith TC with bursts of 7.7087; Iversen A with bursts of 4.3685; Boutin JP with bursts of 3.6305; Horn O with bursts of 3.112; Sourander A with bursts of 3.0452; Putnam SD with bursts of 3.0452; Payne DC with bursts of 2.087; Secer HI with bursts of 2.675; Parsons T with bursts of 2.4611, and Akyuz A with bursts of 2.4172
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Mapping of the military health and medicine research institutions cooperative network from 2007 to 2016. The top 10 institutes were the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, the United States Army, the United States Navy, Kings College London, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Boston University, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Naval Health Research Center, and VA Boston Healthcare System. The size of the node ring represents the number of papers published by this institution. The nodes with purple outer rings are institutions with high-level centrality and those with red inner rings are institutions with a high level of burst values
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Regional analysis of the military health and medicine research from 2007 to 2016. Figure 6 shows that military health and medicine research is mainly distributed in Europe and the United States (lower left and lower right in Fig. 6, a green point represents a paper) and that other countries participate in less research
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