Institutionalization and internationalization of research on the applications of the geographical information systems in health planning

Recently, geographical information systems have been very intensively applied in social life and in public health in particular. A retrospective problem-oriented search on their use in health planning was performed in Web of Science of Web of Knowledge, three versions of MEDLINE, Scopus, EMBASE, and ProQuest Medical in 1990-2010. The annual dynamics of a set of scientometric parameters characterizing several aspects of the abstracted publications, authors' scientific institutions, journals, authors, citations, and languages was comparatively analyzed. It was established that world publication output on such a relatively narrow topic was reflected to a different extent in these data-bases. MEDLINE (PubMed) presented with 484 papers published in 243 journals followed by MEDLINE (WoK) with 360 papers in 215 journals. The abstracted publications were mainly in English, but 14 other languages were present in significant numbers. Publications by authors from 44 countries were abstracted in WoS but from 29 countries in MEDLINE (Ebsco). The most productive authors and institutions as well as the 'core' journals were identified. The International Journal of Health Geography occupied the leading position. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (USA) was one of the most productive research institutions in WoS and in Scopus. Scientific institutions and journals belonged to problem-oriented and to mono-, two- and three-disciplinary thematic profiles as well. Some essential peculiarities of the dynamics of research institutionalization and internationalization in this interdisciplinary field were illustrated. The constellation of specific semantically-loaded indicators could be applied for the purposes of problem-oriented analyses as it could timely identify the essential patterns of scientific advances in rapidly expanding interdisciplinary topics.