Article type
Year
Abstract
Background: Cochrane Colloquium is the annual scientific and business meeting of the Cochrane Collaboration, an international network of more than 28 000 dedicated people from over 100 countries/regions. However, what countries/regions involved in the Colloquium and how they worked with each other were unknown.
Objectives: To provide a visualized map of international cooperation based on the abstracts of the 20th Cochrane Colloquium.
Methods: Two researchers (R Sun and CH Shi) extracted the information of author’s countries/regions for each abstract of the 20th Cochrane Colloquium. Co-occurrence matrix of author’s countries/regions was built with the bicomb software and visualized with the UCINET software.
Results: There were 251 abstracts, including 68 oral abstracts and 183 poster abstracts, in the 20th Cochrane Colloquium, with involvement of 44 countries/regions. The median of participant countries/regions in one abstract was 1 (range: 1–12), and the five countries/regions participated in most abstracts were USA (55, 21.9%), China (48, 19.1%), Canada (47, 18.7%), Australia (36, 14.3%) and UK (33, 13.1%). The visualized network (Fig. 1) showed that USA and Canada were located near the center of the chart and had bigger node size, which means they linked more to other nodes (European countries like UK, Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Poland, Spain, Finland etc. as well as Latin American Countries like Costa Rica, Argentina and Chile etc.). Many Asian countries/regions (including China, Thailand, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Myanmar and Taiwan) could be considered periphery members. India, Belgium and Malaysia even had no links with other countries/regions.
Conclusions: USA and Canada participated in the most abstracts, were located close the center of the international network, and had closer relations with European and Latin American countries/regions. Asian countries/regions, especially China, although participated in many abstracts, but hardly cooperated with other countries/regions, which need to be improved.
Objectives: To provide a visualized map of international cooperation based on the abstracts of the 20th Cochrane Colloquium.
Methods: Two researchers (R Sun and CH Shi) extracted the information of author’s countries/regions for each abstract of the 20th Cochrane Colloquium. Co-occurrence matrix of author’s countries/regions was built with the bicomb software and visualized with the UCINET software.
Results: There were 251 abstracts, including 68 oral abstracts and 183 poster abstracts, in the 20th Cochrane Colloquium, with involvement of 44 countries/regions. The median of participant countries/regions in one abstract was 1 (range: 1–12), and the five countries/regions participated in most abstracts were USA (55, 21.9%), China (48, 19.1%), Canada (47, 18.7%), Australia (36, 14.3%) and UK (33, 13.1%). The visualized network (Fig. 1) showed that USA and Canada were located near the center of the chart and had bigger node size, which means they linked more to other nodes (European countries like UK, Switzerland, Norway, Italy, Poland, Spain, Finland etc. as well as Latin American Countries like Costa Rica, Argentina and Chile etc.). Many Asian countries/regions (including China, Thailand, Singapore, Japan, Korea, Myanmar and Taiwan) could be considered periphery members. India, Belgium and Malaysia even had no links with other countries/regions.
Conclusions: USA and Canada participated in the most abstracts, were located close the center of the international network, and had closer relations with European and Latin American countries/regions. Asian countries/regions, especially China, although participated in many abstracts, but hardly cooperated with other countries/regions, which need to be improved.
