Scientific publications in critical care medicine journals from East Asia: a 10-year survey of the literature

Objective: The quantity and quality of publications in critical care medicine from East Asia haven’t been reported. This study aimed to investigate the contribution of publications from East Asia.

Methods: Articles from China, Japan and South Korea in 2005 to 2014 were retrieved from Web of Science and Pubmed. The number of publications, impact factor, citation, and article types were analyzed.

Results: There were 3076 publications from East Asia (1720 from China, 913 from Japan, and 443 from South Korea). There were a significant decrease in publications from Japan (p = 0.024) and significant increases from China (p = 0.000) and South Korea (p = 0.009). From 2006, the number of articles from China exceed Japan. China had the highest total impact factor (6618.48) and citation (18416), followed by Japan (4566.03; 15440) and South Korea (1998.19; 5599). Japan had the highest mean impact factor (5.00) and citations (16.91), followed by South Korea (4.51; 12.64) and China (3.85; 10.71).

Conclusions: China and South Korea`s contributions to critical care medicine had significant increases during the past 10 years, while Japan had a significant decrease. China was the most productive region in East Asia since 2006. Japan had the highest quality research output.