Cardiovascular research in Germany 2020-A scientometric analysis

In the present scientometric analysis, the research performance in the field of cardiovascular medicine was examined, taking the increasing subspecialization into account. The analysis showed that research activity was highest in the field of coronary artery disease (CAD) with 6153 publications, whereas, for example, the field of peripheral artery occlusive disease (PAOD) showed lower activity with 2261 original articles. A further examination of the research performance was carried out separately for all federal states (both in terms of the number of inhabitants and the gross domestic product, GDP, as well as the number of medical faculties) in which thematic focusses could be noted. The quality of cardiovascular research was determined using the Hirsch (H) index. Here, the fields of CAD and arrhythmia showed the highest scores with an H index of 10.1. In addition, a gender-specific analysis of cardiovascular subspecialties was performed, which revealed a clear difference between the various subject areas. The percentage of women was lowest in research in the field of arrhythmia (17%) compared to the field of heart failure with the highest proportion of women (25%). In all analyzed subspecialties, there has been a significant increase in female authors within the last 20 years. The average H index was also lower for women but the difference was less pronounced here than in the absolute number of publications. Furthermore, international collaborations were commonly observed, with the USA being Germany's most frequent cooperation partner in all subject areas, followed by numerous neighboring European countries.