Productivity and Influence in Bioinformatics: A Bibliometric Analysis using PubMed Central Min Song Department of Library and Information Science, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, Korea E-mail:
[email protected] SuYeon Kim Department of Library and Information Science, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul, Korea Guo Zhang School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University Bloomington, IN, USA Ying Ding School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University Bloomington, IN, USA Tamy Chambers School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University Bloomington, IN, USA Abstract Bioinformatics is a fast growing field based on the optimal the use of “big data” gathered in genomic, proteomics, and functional genomics research. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive and in-depth bibliometric analysis of the field of Bioinformatics by extracting citation data from PubMed Central full-text. Citation data for the period, 2000 to 2011, comprising 20,869 papers with 546,245 citations, was used to evaluate the productivity and influence of this emerging field. Four measures were used to identify productivity; most productive authors, most productive countries, most productive organization, and most popular subject terms. Research impact was analyzed based on the measures of most cited papers, most cited authors, emerging stars, and leading organizations. Results show the overall trends between the periods, 2000 to 2003, and, 2004 to 2007, were dissimilar, while trends between the periods, 2004 to 2007, and, 2008 to 2011, were similar. In addition, the field of bioinformatics has undergone a significant shift to co-evolve with other biomedical disciplines. Introduction The rapid development of powerful computing technology has fueled a global boom in the biomedical industry that has led to the explosive growth of biological information generated by the scientific community.