Measurement Of Clinical Value Of Medical Research Papers Cited By International Clinical Guidelines

With the advancement of medical science,the quantity of medical research papers has gradually increased and is rapidly gaining momentum.Medical research papers are important outcomes of research work for medical researchers,and the evaluation of the quality of medical research papers,especially their clinical value,has always been the focus of attention for medical research personnel.There are multiple perspectives to evaluate the clinical value of medical research papers,including the traditional citation-based quantitative evaluation,the social impact evaluation that introduces alternative metrics,and the full-text citation evaluation based on citation position,citation intensity,and citation content.By reviewing the evaluation methods of medical research papers and the research status of clinical value assessment,it is found that the evaluation of medical research papers is mostly based on being included by authoritative institutions,citation frequency statistics,or analysis of citation position,citation sentiment,and citation purpose.Recently,research has also explored that the inclusion of medical research achievements in international clinical guidelines can serve as an important measure of clinical value,but there is still a lack of research on the citation position of international clinical guidelines.The appearance of citations in different positions in papers may have different effects on the paper.Traditional academic papers are generally divided into four parts:introduction,methods,results,and discussion or conclusion.However,a complete clinical guideline will comprehensively cover various aspects of a particular health topic or disease,including prevention,diagnosis,treatment,and corresponding recommendations.The number of recommendations varies,ranging from dozens to hundreds,and the number of references cited in international clinical guidelines is generally more than 400.Moreover,the guideline recommendations and evidence grading standards followed by different countries,institutions,and societies may not be consistent.International clinical guidelines have structural characteristics such as a long length,complex content,and multiple citation positions,the same paper may be cited multiple times in a single guideline,and the number of citations also needs to be considered,which increases the difficulty of citation analysis.Therefore,further research is needed to distinguish the clinical value of medical research papers reflected in different citation positions in international clinical guidelines.Drawing on the theoretical foundation of analyzing the full text citations of scientific and technological papers,this study employs a novel perspective based on the international clinical guidelines citations.It extracts the citation location characteristic words of the full text guidelines,and organizes and summarizes the evidence grade standards followed by different guidelines according to the evidence-based characteristics of the international clinical guidelines themselves.Through expert consultation,it divides the citation locations of ten international clinical guidelines into Methodology,Epidemiology,Diagnosis&Staging,Treatment,Prognosis,Others,Recommendations Level 1(High),Recommendations Level 2(Intermediate),Recommendations Level 3(Low),and Recommendations Level 4(Very Low).Utilizing the AHP method to confirm citation location weights,the study constructs a measurement model of the clinical value of medical research papers cited by international clinical guidelines based on the combined expert advice and citation strength.It focuses on analyzing the citation locations of papers in international clinical guidelines and comparing the correlation of traditional evaluation indicators with the clinical value evaluation results of medical research papers.The study applies this method to evaluate medical institutions in domestic medical schools/hospitals,comparing and analyzing the ranking differences between citation location-weighted and unweighted rankings.The main research conclusions of this study are:(1)There is a significant difference between the scores of papers weighted by citation location and those that are not.The difference between them is quite large,and relying solely on ranking by papers cited by international clinical guidelines cannot highlight the value level of papers.Weighting by citation location can more finely display the gradient of the value of the papers.(2)The citation strength of papers cited by international clinical guidelines in the fields of lung cancer and liver cancer both exhibit a clear power law distribution pattern and are correlated with the clinical value score.(3)The concentration tendency of citation locations in guidelines varies in different diseases,and the clinical value score of papers is relatively related to the number of citation locations.(4)Chinese hospitals/medical schools with a high number of published Chinese papers are also ranked high based on citation location-weighted institutional scores,indicating that their clinical practice in the field of oncology is strong.When institutions have the same number of published papers,differences in their citation location-weighted institutional ranking are related to the differences in citation location and frequency cited by international clinical guidelines.