Research productivity and collaboration of the NIH-funded HIV Vaccine Trials Network: a bibliometric analysis

ABSTRACT Objectives To assess the scientific productivity and impact of the HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN) over the last two decades and to examine how research collaboration has evolved over this time in the HIV vaccine field. Design This section does not apply since this is a bibliometric study. Methods A systematic bibliometric analysis was conducted to identify all HIV vaccine and HVTN associated publications from 1999-2019. All publications were sourced from the NLM Pubmed database and funding information was obtained from the SPIRES and iSearch databases. Both the InCites and iCite databases were utilized for impact metrics. Finally, HVTN clinical trials were obtained from clinicaltrials.gov . Multiple field normalized citation metrics, such as the relative citation ratio (RCR) and number of publications in the top 1% and 10% within their respective field, were used to gauge scientific impact of publications. Network analyses were used to examine collaboration among the most prolific researchers in the HIV vaccine research. Setting This section does not apply since this is a bibliometric study. Participants This section does not apply since this is a bibliometric study. Intervention This section does not apply since this is a bibliometric study. Results 79 clinical trials were funded by the HVTN from 1999 to 2019. These were carried out via a network of trial sites in 23 countries and 94 cities around the world. In total, 465 publications (89.5% original research articles, 7.3% reviews, and 3.2% other) acknowledged funding from the HVTN. Impact analyses using multiple field normalized metrics revealed that HVTN publications are highly cited with a mean RCR of 1.8. 10,481 HIV vaccine related publications were used to analyze collaboration in this field. Compared to the field as a whole, publications attributed to the HVTN had significantly more authors per publication (p-value < 0.001) and our network analysis found that HVTN-associated authors also had a higher degree (p-value < 0.01). Conclusions Bibliometric analysis of the last two decades of HIV vaccine research by the HVTN revealed that in addition to conducting a large number of clinical trials worldwide, the network produced high impact publications and was associated with increased collaboration among researchers. ARTICLE SUMMARY Strengths and limitations of this study To the best of our knowledge, this is the only study that has provided a systematic bibliometric analysis of the HVTN since its inception. Studies like this can illustrate overall outcomes of large clinical network programs. Advanced field normalized metrics were used to provide the most accurate measures of productivity, impact, and collaboration. Identification of HVTN publications using funding acknowledgements can lead to an underestimate of the number research articles since not all research articles include grant funding information. Variations in a single author’s name across publications can make name disambiguation difficult when performing network analyses.