Building a fatigue research collaborative: A scientometrics, topic and gap analysis

Abstract

Background Since fatigue is shared across many conditions, understanding and managing fatigue requires cross-condition collaboration. The current analysis, focusing on fatigue in patients with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), aimed to take the first steps towards building such collaboration by identifying potential members, presenting a map of studied topics and remaining gaps, and highlighting potential funders. Methods This study used components of scientometrics, content analysis, systematic review, and gap analysis using four data sources. Results We identified research teams on IBD fatigue in six countries with 23 authors who have published on fatigue in more than one condition, with chronic fatigue syndrome as the dominant topic of interest among the researchers. Crohn’s & Colitis UK and AbbVie were the main funders of research on IBD fatigue. Most publications were observational studies and respectively focused on psychological problems, physical problems, and outcomes (quality of life followed by severity of illness index) associated with IBD fatigue. A triad with King’s College London + Crohn’s & Colitis UK + University College London was the main active research network. In co-authorship network analysis, the collaboration across countries was more visible in a wired or star-shaped network with multiple core points; however, the collaboration in the largest cluster showed a neuron- or loop-shaped collaboration across the most active institutes. Conclusions This research took a mixed methods approach to initiating a collaboration by identifying members and building a map of recent research and gaps in order to tackle fatigue as a complex, cross-condition, and multi-disciplinary problem. Interventional and qualitative studies, along with systematic reviews to fill the research gaps, are needed. An international collaboration among institutes could provide support for large initiatives such as the release of standards of best practice, clinical practice guidelines, and consensus-based definitions of fatigue.