Research in orthopaedics from China has thrived over the last decade: a bibliometric analysis of publication activity.

INTRODUCTION: Over the past decades, there have been great advances in orthopaedics in China. The purpose of this study was to investigate the orthopaedic research output in the three Chinese-speaking regions - the Mainland (ML), Hong Kong (HK), and Taiwan (TW).

HYPOTHESIS: We hypothesized that there was a positive trend in China orthopaedic research during the past decade and this regardless of the Chinese-speaking regions of origin.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Forty-nine orthopaedic journals were retrieved from the PubMed database and Science Citation Index Expanded. Articles from ML, TW, and HK in 2000 to 2009 were identified. The total number of articles, clinical trials, randomized controlled trials (RCTs), impact factors (IF), citations, and articles published in the top 10 orthopaedic journals were analyzed.

RESULTS: A total of 1878 published articles in 2000 to 2009 were broken down as follows: ML (607), TW (865), and HK (406). There was a significant increase in published articles for ML and TW from 2000 to 2009. The number of published articles from ML exceeded the total sum of articles from TW and HK in 2009. The accumulated IF of articles from TW (1751.91) was higher than that from ML (1054.67) and HK (708.25). TW had the highest average IF (2.025), followed by ML (1.902) and HK (1.862). The total citations of published articles in 2000 to 2009 from TW (4759) were higher than those for HK (2276) and ML (1751). The highest average citation of each article was from HK (5.784), followed by TW (5.720) and ML (3.051). TW published 339 articles in 10 high-impact journals, whereas ML and HK published 267 and 154 articles, respectively.

DISCUSSION: Chinese researchers in the field of orthopaedics have been more and more active in the global orthopaedic community during the past 10 years. ML seems to have caught up to HK and TW in respect to research output.