Scientometrics of horizontal gene transfer research during 19912005

1
Scientometrics of Horizontal Gene Transfer
Research during 1991-2005 De-Cheng Yu1, Wen-Ta
Chiu2,3 and Yuh-Shan Ho1 1Bibliometric Centre,
Taipei Medical University - Wan-Fang
Hospital 2Graduate Institute of Injury Prevention
and Control, Taipei Medical University 3Department
of Neurosurgery, Taipei Medical University Wan
Fang Hospital
Introduction Horizontal gene transfer or lateral
gene transfer, is the collective name for
processes that permit the exchange of DNA among
organisms of different species. Traditional
thought was that microorganisms evolved clonally,
passing genes from mother to daughter cells with
little or no exchange of DNA among diverse
species. Recent studies of microbial genomes have
shown that genomes contain genes that are closely
related to a number of different prokaryotes,
sometimes to phylogenetically very distantly
related ones. The horizontal movement of gene
play an important role in the evolution of
microorganisms. Our purpose was to study the
horizontal gene transfer research based on 1,172
documents published in Science Citation Index
(SCI)-indexed periodicals between 1991 and 2005.
These documents were analyzed and evaluated
according to publication distribution and were
used to determine the quantitative
characteristics of horizontal gene transfer
research.
Methods Documents used in this study were based
on the databases of the SCI which was accessed
from the ISI Web of Science. Horizontal gene
transfer was used as keywords to search titles,
abstracts, and keywords.
Results
P No. of articles PG Total pages AU No. of
authors NR Cited reference count SP single
country publications CP international
collaboration publications CPP 3 year (including
publish year) citation per publication

• Conclusions
• Ten document types were found in the total of
  1,172 documents published in 255 journals.
• USA has highest publication (38) with 12 of
  citation per publications and followed distantly
  by United Kingdom.
• The G7 industrial countries (USA, Japan, Germany,
  UK, France, Italy, and Canada) represent a share
  of corresponding authors of 72 of world articles
  and 83 citations.
• Thirty-seven percent of all articles were
  published in journals which listed in the
  category of Microbiology.
• The most frequently used author keyword in
  articles was horizontal gene transfer (47),
  and followed by evolution (7), phylogeny
  (5.9), gene transfer (4.8), and escherichia
  coli (3.7).
• The most productive corresponding institute was
  the University of Wurzburg at Germany with 14
  articles and 7.36 of citation per articles.
• 6.8 of all articles were published in Journal of
  Bacteriology with impact factor 4.146.
• There were 16 articles never be cited since it
  was published. 7.3 articles was cited once and
  5.5 articles was cited 2 times.