Benchmarking DME
What does analysis of the last five years of literature on diabetic macular edema tell us about the priorities of the field and the major contributors to it?
Diabetic macular edema (DME) is the major cause of vision loss in people with diabetic retinopathy – if a person has diabetes, they have a 1 in 10 chance of developing DME during their life. The raw numbers are chilling: the International Diabetes Federation estimates that in 2011 that there were 366 million people with diabetes, and they predict this to rise to 552 million by 2030 (1).
To provide insight into the past and predictions for the future of the field, a series of metrics were applied to the last five years of the published literature. We asked:
- What are the major topics for the field?
- Which publications have the greatest impact?
- How is the knowledge available online?
- Who are the most prolific authors?
PubMed, was searched for diabetic macular edema* with results limited to the last five years, in humans (for a clinical focus). The data were analyzed in Microsoft Excel 2013.
Most frequent topics on PubMed
DME publications per year
Top 25 journals (by publication number)
Journal Impact Factors for 2013
Average Impact Factors for journals over the past five years
Average journal Eigenfactor score
Most prolific authors in DME, 2009–2013
- D.R. Whiting et al., “IDF diabetes atlas: global estimates of the prevalence of diabetes for 2011 and 2030”, Diabetes Res. Clin. Pract., 94, 311–21 (2011). doi:10.1016/j.diabres.2011.10.029.
I spent seven years as a medical writer, writing primary and review manuscripts, congress presentations and marketing materials for numerous – and mostly German – pharmaceutical companies. Prior to my adventures in medical communications, I was a Wellcome Trust PhD student at the University of Edinburgh.
