Irritable Bowel Syndrome Spectroscopy in Web of Science Articles during Four Time Periods

Abstract

Introduction: Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is one of the most common and costly gastrointestinal diseases which results in disturbances in the performance of intestines. In this study, the most important historical references of IBS were identified using spectroscopy method. Methods: This was a bibliometrics investigation carried out using Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS) approach. Data gathering was carried out from the Web of Science database, and by searching for the term irritable bowel syndrome in the subject field. 13841 records and 320218 citations were retrieved and analyzed using the RPYS.exe software application. Results: The distribution of the number of references in the IBS documents was divided into four time periods: 1900-1950, 1951-1975, 1976-2000, and 2001-2015. The first group of highly-cited articles focused on the introduction of IBS, its diagnostic methods, and possible causes, and the second group focused on the pathophysiological and physiological aspects of the disease. The next group dealt with other aspects of IBS, including epidemiology, medicine, financial costs, and physiological and clinical factors, and the large number of citations in the fourth group was due to the type of review articles and their potential for receiving more citations. Conclusion: The results indicate that the articles compared to other resources have the greatest impact on the formation of the historical origin of the topics in the field of IBS, and the most highly cited resources follow the historical process of the disease.

Keywords

• irritable bowel syndrome
• spectrum analysis
• scientometrics
• bibliometrics
• citation analysis