Global publication productivity in dermatology: a bibliometric description of the past and estimation of the future

Abstract Background In the past two centuries, generations of dermatologists around the world have created an enormous number of publications. To our knowledge, no bibliometric analysis of these publications has been performed so far, nor have registered trials been analysed to anticipate future publication trends. Objectives To determine the global distribution of national publication productivity, most published topics, institutions and funding sources contributing most to publications and to anticipate future trends based on registered clinical trials. Methods Following pre‐assessment on PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and Scopus, the number of publications for ‘dermatology’ was determined for each of 195 countries, normalized per 1 Mio inhabitants and bibliometrically analysed. Dermatology‐related trials registered at clinicaltrials.gov were specified by the top‐10 diagnoses for the top‐10 countries. Results The search yielded 1 071 518 publications between 1832 and 2019 with the top‐5 diagnoses being melanoma, basal cell carcinoma, psoriasis, pruritus/itch and atopic dermatitis. The top‐3 countries with highest absolute numbers of publications were the USA (30.6%), Germany (8.1%) and the UK (8.1%), whereas Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden had the highest publication rates when normalized by inhabitants. The most productive affiliation was the Harvard Medical School, the leading funding source the National Institutes of Health. Currently, maximum number of trials are registered in the USA (8111), France (1543) and Canada (1368). The highest percentage of all dermatology‐related trials in a specific country were as follows: Melanoma in the Netherlands (24.8%), psoriasis in Germany (21.7%) and atopic dermatitis in Japan (15.9%). Conclusion The top‐10 countries including the USA, Canada, a few European and Asian countries contributed more than 3/4 of all publications. The USA hold the dominant leader position both in past publication productivity and currently registered trials. While most Western countries continue to focus their research on the top‐10 topics, China and India appear to prioritize their scope towards other topics.