Bibliometric Analysis: Six Decades of Scientific Production from a Nationwide Institution: Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE) from Mexico

Abstract

Background: This study employed bibliometric analysis to ascertain the research focus areas among a group of Mexican physicians affiliated with the Instituto de Seguridad y Servicios Sociales de los Trabajadores del Estado (ISSSTE). ISSSTE, a healthcare institution catering to a diverse range of diseases, offers a distinctive perspective on the investigated specialties within the realm of health. The primary objective was to identify knowledge gaps in medical care disciplines through a comprehensive examination of scholarly publications. Methods: We retrieved Scopus papers affiliated with “ISSSTE” and saved them as .CSV files. Subsequently, we employed VOSviewer, biblioshiny, and bibliometrix for bibliometric analysis. This enabled us to identify prominent institutions, prolific authors, highly cited researchers, and their respective affiliations. Results: Our analysis identified 2063 publications; the specialty internal medicine accounted for the greatest proportion with 831 publications. Original papers accounted for 82% of the total, with 52% of them being written in Spanish. The majority of scientific output, 92%, originated from Mexico City. The annual production has steadily increased since 2010, peaking in 2021 with over 200 publications. However, papers on prevalent conditions, such as metabolic syndrome, received limited citations, and the L0 index (percentage of uncited items) for all papers is close to 60%. Scopus mislabeled one affiliation, and some cases show a low paper-to-author ratio of 0.5 Discussion: Additional concerns, such as honorary authorship due to excessive authors per paper, and the underlying causes of low citation rates in Mexican publications, warrant further examination. Moreover, our research emphasizes the urgency of bolstering research and development funding, which was consistently below 0.5% of GDP for the past four decades, falling short of legal mandates and international benchmarks. We endorse the establishment of robust research collectives in Latin America to address these challenges, foster regional scientific output, and transition from knowledge consumers to knowledge producers, thereby reducing dependence on foreign technology.