peerj_json_files/PeerJ_Json_112.json

{
    "v1_Abstract": "We used existing and customized bibliometric and scientometric methods to analyze publication trends in neuroimaging research of minimally conscious states and describe the domain in terms of its geographic, contributor, and content features. We considered publication rates for the years 20022011, author interconnections, the rate at which new authors are added, and the domains that inform the work of author contributors. We also provided a content analysis of clinical and ethical themes within the relevant literature. We found a 27% growth in the number of papers over the period of study, professional diversity among a wide range of peripheral author contributors but only few authors who dominate the field, and few new technical paradigms and clinical themes that would fundamentally expand the landscape. The results inform both the science of consciousness as well as parallel ethics and policy studies of the potential for translational challenges of neuroimaging in research and health care of people with disordered states of consciousness.",
    "v1_col_introduction": "introduction  : Bibliometric and scientometric methods provide a means of charting trends within\nscholarly publications (Borgman, 1990). Beyond simply establishing the rate of publication of a given author or topic and counting citations, they can be used to chart the establishment of emerging fields within broader disciplines. In this study, we apply existing and new bibliometric methods to neuroimaging research of minimally conscious states (henceforth NiMCS), a domain of research that has its roots in the early 2000s and that has potentially important implications for the health care of people with traumatic brain injuries (TBIs).\nNiMCS is directly concerned with neuroimaging for patients with disorders of\nconsciousness \u2013 a set of conditions that span the fully unresponsive vegetative state (VS) to the more intermittent responsive, minimally conscious state (MCS). Acquired and traumatic brain injuries that can give rise to disorders of consciousness account for an estimated 57 million people worldwide (Langlois et al. 2006). In the United States, an average of 1.4 million TBIs occur each year (Langlois et al. 2006; Roozenbeek et al. 2013).\nRecent advances in research using functional neuroimaging technology have provided\nnovel methods to assess consciousness in those patients who remain impaired, and offer the potential of improving diagnosis and possibly means of communicating with them through measures of brain activity (Fern\u00e1ndez-Espejo et al. 2011; Monti et al. 2010; Owen & Coleman 2008; Owen et al. 2006). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), for example, measures changes in regional cerebral blood flow and yields activation maps of cognitive processes (Boly et al. 2008; Schiff et al. 2005; Monti et al. 2010). The use of fMRI is limited, however, given scanner cost, access, and the still evolving science especially as it pertains to the interpretability of the signals. A historically older method that measures electrical activity from the scalp \u2013 electroencephalography (EEG) \u2013 has also been tested for this application, with success in\n20\n21 22 23 24 25 26 27\n28 29 30 31 32 33\n34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:2:0:NEW 18 Aug 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\nrevealing differences between levels of disordered consciousness (Olivia Gosseries et al. 2011; Steven Laureys et al. 2010). While the information about the speed of processing that EEG exceeds that of fMRI, information about the spatial distribution of function across brain regions ispales comparatively incomplete. Nonetheless, EEG does offer important advantages including lower costs for purchase and maintenance, and portability for use at the bedside. Eventually, a combination of both technologies may be the solution of choice in the translational trajectory.\nThe enthusiasm for the basic science of consciousness and promise of clinical utility in\nimproving the diagnosis and prognosis of people with TBI with either single or multiple imaging modalities have been accompanied, if not fuelled by the press. Coverage of promising innovation is an opportunity for public education, but headlines such as \u201cVegetative patient \u2018speaks\u2019 o doctors through scanner\u201d (BBC News November 2012) and \u201cPeople appear to dream while in minimally conscious state\u201d (US News August 2011), can lead to misunderstanding (Racine et al. 2006; Racine et al. 2005). Moreover, media visibility, taken together with both medical significance and highly publicized internal debates about technical details of study design and data analysis (Goldfine et al. 2013; Cruse et al. 2013; Cruse et al. 2012), leave the Academy and public alike wondering about what is true about the evolution of the domain and, by extension, what the evolution signals for the future of the domain.\nTo address these challenges, we turned to bibliometric analysis to drive a top-down,\ntopical review of the research (M\u00f6rchen et al. 2008; Small 2006). We posed the following specific research questions:\n1) What are the publication growth patterns in NiMCS as reflected in the peer-reviewed literature?\n2) Who is contributing to research in this field?\n44 45 46 47 48 49\n50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60\n61 62 63\n64 65\n66\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:2:0:NEW 18 Aug 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\n3) How are authors in this field related to one another?\n4) What are the key translational issues?\nTo answer these questions, we used existing methods as well as customized innovative\nmethods to map publication trends and the degree to which the relevant literature gains new authors. We also incorporated qualitative analysis of MeSH terms to understand the fields in which authors have published, and carried out a clustering of articles with a visualization component for comparisons among subfields (Struble & Dharmanolla 2004; Yamamoto & Takagi 2007). With these data, we explore the historical path of NiMCS research and discuss the future of the research as it can be expected to further unfold.",
    "v2_Abstract": "We used existing and customized bibliometric and scientometric methods to analyze publication trends in neuroimaging research of minimally conscious states and describe the domain in terms of its geographic, contributor, and content features. We considered publication rates for the years 2002-2011, author interconnections, the rate at which new authors are added, and the domains that inform the work of author contributors. We also provided a content analysis of clinical and ethical themes within the relevant literature. We found a 27% growth in the number of papers over the period of study, professional diversity among a wide range of peripheral author contributors but only few authors who dominate the field, and few new technical paradigms and clinical themes that would fundamentally expand the landscape. The results inform both the science of consciousness as well as parallel ethics and policy studies of the potential for translational challenges of neuroimaging in research and health care of people with disordered states of consciousness.",
    "v2_col_introduction": "introduction  : Bibliometric and scientometric methods provide a means of charting\ntrends within scholarly publications (Borgman, 1990). Beyond simply establishing the rate of publication of a given author or topic and counting citations, they can be used to chart the establishment of emerging fields within broader disciplines. In this study, we apply existing and new bibliometric methods to neuroimaging research of minimally conscious states (henceforth NiMCS), a domain of research that has its roots in the early 2000s and that has potentially important implications for the health care of people with traumatic brain injuries (TBIs).\nNiMCS is directly concerned with neuroimaging for patients with\ndisorders of consciousness \u2013 a set of conditions that span the fully unresponsive vegetative state (VS) to the more intermittent responsive, minimally conscious state (MCS). Acquired and traumatic brain injuries that can give rise to disorders of consciousness account for an estimated 57 million people worldwide (Langlois et al. 2006). In the United States, an average of 1.4 million TBIs occur each year (Langlois et al. 2006; Roozenbeek et al. 2013).\nRecent advances in research using functional neuroimaging technology\nhave provided novel methods to assess consciousness in those patients who remain impaired, and offer the potential of improving diagnosis and possibly means of communicating with them through measures of brain activity (Fern\u00e1ndez-Espejo et al. 2011; Monti et al. 2010; Owen & Coleman 2008;\n20\n21\n22\n23\n24\n25\n26\n27\n28\n29\n30\n31\n32\n33\n34\n35\n36\n37\n38\n39\n40\n41\n42\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\nOwen et al. 2006). Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), for example, measures changes in regional cerebral blood flow and yields activation maps of cognitive processes (Boly et al. 2008; Schiff et al. 2005; Monti et al. 2010). The use of fMRI is limited, however, given scanner cost, access, and the still evolving science especially as it pertains to the interpretability of the signals. A historically older method that measures electrical activity from the scalp \u2013 electroencephalography (EEG) \u2013 has also been tested for this application, with success in revealing differences between levels of disordered consciousness (Olivia Gosseries et al. 2011; Steven Laureys et al. 2010). While the information about the speed of processing that EEG exceeds that of fMRI, information about the spatial distribution of function across brain regions pales comparatively. Nonetheless, EEG does offer important advantages including lower costs for purchase and maintenance, and portability for use at the bedside. Eventually, a combination of both technologies may be the solution of choice in the translational trajectory.\nThe enthusiasm for the basic science of consciousness and promise of\nclinical utility in improving the diagnosis and prognosis of people with TBI with either single or multiple imaging modalities have been accompanied, if not fuelled by the press. Coverage of promising innovation is an opportunity for public education, but headlines such as \u201cVegetative patient \u2018speaks\u2019 o doctors through scanner\u201d (BBC News November 2012) and \u201cPeople appear to dream while in minimally conscious state\u201d (US News August 2011), can lead to misunderstanding (Racine et al. 2006; Racine et al. 2005). Moreover,\n43\n44\n45\n46\n47\n48\n49\n50\n51\n52\n53\n54\n55\n56\n57\n58\n59\n60\n61\n62\n63\n64\n65\n66\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\nmedia visibility, taken together with both medical significance and highly publicized internal debates about technical details of study design and data analysis (Goldfine et al. 2013; Cruse et al. 2013; Cruse et al. 2012), leave the Academy and public alike wondering about what is true about the evolution of the domain and, by extension, what the evolution signals for the future of the domain.\nTo address these challenges, we turned to bibliometric analysis to drive\na top-down, topical review of the research (M\u00f6rchen et al. 2008; Small 2006). We posed the following specific research questions:\n1) What are the publication growth patterns in NiMCS as reflected in the peer-reviewed literature?\n2) Who is contributing to research in this field?\n3) How are authors in this field related to one another?\n4) What are the key translational issues?\nTo answer these questions, we used existing methods as well as\ncustomized innovative methods to map publication trends and the degree to which the relevant literature gains new authors. We also incorporated qualitative analysis of MeSH terms to understand the fields in which authors have published, and carried out a clustering of articles with a visualization component for comparisons among subfields (Struble & Dharmanolla 2004; Yamamoto & Takagi 2007). With these data, we explore the historical path of\n67\n68\n69\n70\n71\n72\n73\n74\n75\n76\n77\n78\n79\n80\n81\n82\n83\n84\n85\n86\n87\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\nNiMCS research and discuss the future of the research as it can be expected to further unfold.",
    "v3_Abstract": "We used existing and customized bibliometric and scientometric methods to analyze publication trends in neuroimaging research of minimally conscious states and describe the domain in terms of its geographic, contributor, and content features. We considered publication rates for the years 2002-2011, author interconnections, the rate at which new authors are added, and the domains that inform the work of author contributors. We also provided a content analysis of clinical and ethical themes within the relevant literature. We found a 27% growth in the number of papers over the period of study, professional diversity among a wide range of peripheral author contributors but only few authors who dominate the field, and few new technical paradigms and clinical themes that would fundamentally expand the landscape. The results inform both the science of consciousness as well as parallel ethics and policy studies of the potential for translational challenges of neuroimaging in research and health care of people with disordered states of consciousness.",
    "v3_col_introduction": "introduction  : Bibliometric\u00a0and\u00a0scientometric\u00a0methods\u00a0provide\u00a0a\u00a0means\u00a0of\u00a0charting\u00a0trends\u00a0within\u00a0scholarly\u00a0\npublications\u00a0(Borgman,\u00a01990).\u00a0Beyond\u00a0simply\u00a0establishing\u00a0the\u00a0rate\u00a0of\u00a0publication\u00a0of\u00a0a\u00a0given\u00a0author\u00a0or\u00a0 topic\u00a0and\u00a0counting\u00a0citations,\u00a0they\u00a0can\u00a0be\u00a0used\u00a0to\u00a0chart\u00a0the\u00a0establishment\u00a0of\u00a0emerging\u00a0fields\u00a0within\u00a0 broader\u00a0disciplines.\u00a0In\u00a0this\u00a0study,\u00a0we\u00a0apply\u00a0existing\u00a0and\u00a0new\u00a0bibliometric\u00a0methods\u00a0to\u00a0neuroimaging\u00a0 research\u00a0of\u00a0minimally\u00a0conscious\u00a0states\u00a0(henceforth\u00a0NiMCS),\u00a0a\u00a0domain\u00a0of\u00a0research\u00a0that\u00a0has\u00a0its\u00a0roots\u00a0in\u00a0 the\u00a0early\u00a02000s\u00a0and,\u00a0that\u00a0has\u00a0potentially\u00a0important\u00a0implications\u00a0for\u00a0the\u00a0health\u00a0care\u00a0of\u00a0people\u00a0with\u00a0 traumatic\u00a0brain\u00a0injuries\u00a0(TBIs).\nNiMCS\u00a0is\u00a0directly\u00a0concerned\u00a0with\u00a0neuroimaging\u00a0for\u00a0patients\u00a0with\u00a0disorders\u00a0of\u00a0consciousness\u00a0\u2013\u00a0\na\u00a0set\u00a0of\u00a0conditions\u00a0that\u00a0span\u00a0the\u00a0fully\u00a0unresponsive\u00a0vegetative\u00a0state\u00a0(VS)\u00a0to\u00a0the\u00a0more\u00a0intermittent\u00a0 responsive,\u00a0minimally\u00a0conscious\u00a0state\u00a0(MCS).\u00a0Acquired\u00a0and\u00a0traumatic\u00a0brain\u00a0injuries\u00a0that\u00a0can\u00a0give\u00a0rise\u00a0 to\u00a0disorders\u00a0of\u00a0consciousness\u00a0account\u00a0for\u00a0an\u00a0estimated\u00a057\u00a0million\u00a0people\u00a0worldwide\u00a0(Langlois\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a0 2006).\u00a0In\u00a0the\u00a0United\u00a0States,\u00a0an\u00a0average\u00a0of\u00a01.4\u00a0million\u00a0TBIs\u00a0occur\u00a0each\u00a0year\u00a0(Langlois\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02006;\u00a0 Roozenbeek\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02013).\u00a0\nRecent\u00a0advances\u00a0in\u00a0research\u00a0using\u00a0functional\u00a0neuroimaging\u00a0technology\u00a0have\u00a0provided\u00a0novel\u00a0\nmethods\u00a0to\u00a0assess\u00a0consciousness\u00a0in\u00a0those\u00a0patients\u00a0who\u00a0remain\u00a0impaired,\u00a0and\u00a0offer\u00a0the\u00a0potential\u00a0of\u00a0 improving\u00a0diagnosis\u00a0and\u00a0possibly\u00a0means\u00a0of\u00a0communicating\u00a0with\u00a0them\u00a0through\u00a0measures\u00a0of\u00a0brain\u00a0 activity\u00a0(Fern\u00e1ndezEspejo\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02011;\u00a0Monti\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02010;\u00a0Owen\u00a0&\u00a0Coleman\u00a02008;\u00a0Owen\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02006).\u00a0 Functional\u00a0magnetic\u00a0resonance\u00a0imaging\u00a0(fMRI),\u00a0for\u00a0example,\u00a0measures\u00a0changes\u00a0in\u00a0regional\u00a0cerebral\u00a0 blood\u00a0flow\u00a0and\u00a0yields\u00a0activation\u00a0maps\u00a0of\u00a0cognitive\u00a0processes\u00a0(Boly\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02008;\u00a0Schiff\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02005;\u00a0 Monti\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02010).\u00a0The\u00a0use\u00a0of\u00a0fMRI\u00a0is\u00a0limited,\u00a0however,\u00a0given\u00a0scanner\u00a0cost,\u00a0access,\u00a0and\u00a0the\u00a0still\u00a0 evolving\u00a0science\u00a0especially\u00a0as\u00a0it\u00a0pertains\u00a0to\u00a0the\u00a0interpretability\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0signals.\u00a0A\u00a0historically\u00a0older\u00a0\n1\n2 3 4 5 6 7 8\n9 10 11 12 13 14\n15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:0:1:NEW 19 Jun 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\n2 method\u00a0that\u00a0measures\u00a0electrical\u00a0activity\u00a0from\u00a0the\u00a0scalp\u00a0\u2013\u00a0electroencephalography\u00a0(EEG)\u00a0\u2013\u00a0has\u00a0also\u00a0 been\u00a0tested\u00a0for\u00a0this\u00a0application,\u00a0with\u00a0success\u00a0in\u00a0revealing\u00a0differences\u00a0between\u00a0levels\u00a0of\u00a0disordered\u00a0 consciousness\u00a0(Olivia\u00a0Gosseries\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02011;\u00a0Steven\u00a0Laureys\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02010).\u00a0While\u00a0the\u00a0information\u00a0about\u00a0 the\u00a0speed\u00a0of\u00a0processing\u00a0that\u00a0EEG\u00a0provides\u00a0exceeds\u00a0that\u00a0of\u00a0fMRI,\u00a0information\u00a0about\u00a0the\u00a0distribution\u00a0of\u00a0 residual\u00a0brain\u00a0function\u00a0across\u00a0brain\u00a0regions\u00a0pales\u00a0comparatively.\u00a0Nonetheless,\u00a0EEG\u00a0does\u00a0offer\u00a0 important\u00a0advantages\u00a0including\u00a0lower\u00a0costs\u00a0for\u00a0purchase\u00a0and\u00a0maintenance,\u00a0and\u00a0portability\u00a0for\u00a0use\u00a0at\u00a0the\u00a0 bedside.\u00a0Eventually,\u00a0a\u00a0combination\u00a0of\u00a0both\u00a0technologies\u00a0may\u00a0be\u00a0the\u00a0solution\u00a0of\u00a0choice\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0 translational\u00a0trajectory.\u00a0\nThe\u00a0enthusiasm\u00a0for\u00a0the\u00a0basic\u00a0science\u00a0of\u00a0consciousness\u00a0and\u00a0promise\u00a0of\u00a0clinical\u00a0utility\u00a0in\u00a0\nimproving\u00a0the\u00a0diagnosis\u00a0and\u00a0prognosis\u00a0of\u00a0people\u00a0with\u00a0TBI\u00a0with\u00a0either\u00a0single\u00a0or\u00a0multiple\u00a0imaging\u00a0 modalities\u00a0have\u00a0been\u00a0accompanied,\u00a0if\u00a0not\u00a0fuelled\u00a0by\u00a0the\u00a0press.\u00a0Coverage\u00a0of\u00a0promising\u00a0innovation\u00a0is\u00a0an\u00a0 opportunity\u00a0for\u00a0public\u00a0education,\u00a0but\u00a0headlines\u00a0such\u00a0as\u00a0\u201cVegetative\u00a0patient\u00a0\u2018speaks\u2019\u00a0do\u00a0doctors\u00a0through\u00a0 scanner\u201d\u00a0(BBC\u00a0News\u00a0November\u00a02012)\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cPeople\u00a0appear\u00a0to\u00a0dream\u00a0while\u00a0in\u00a0minimally\u00a0conscious\u00a0 state\u201d\u00a0(US\u00a0News\u00a0August\u00a02011),\u00a0can\u00a0lead\u00a0to\u00a0misunderstanding\u00a0(Racine\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02006;\u00a0Racine\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02005).\u00a0 Moreover,\u00a0media\u00a0visibility,\u00a0taken\u00a0together\u00a0with\u00a0both\u00a0medical\u00a0significance\u00a0and\u00a0highly\u00a0publicized\u00a0internal\u00a0 debates\u00a0about\u00a0technical\u00a0details\u00a0of\u00a0study\u00a0design\u00a0and\u00a0data\u00a0analysis\u00a0(Goldfine\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02013;\u00a0Cruse\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02013;\u00a0 Cruse\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02012),\u00a0leave\u00a0the\u00a0Academy\u00a0and\u00a0public\u00a0alike\u00a0wondering\u00a0about\u00a0what\u00a0is\u00a0true\u00a0about\u00a0the\u00a0evolution\u00a0 of\u00a0the\u00a0domain\u00a0and,\u00a0by\u00a0extension,\u00a0what\u00a0the\u00a0evolution\u00a0signals\u00a0for\u00a0the\u00a0future\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0domain.\u00a0\nTo\u00a0address\u00a0this\u00a0problem,\u00a0we\u00a0turned\u00a0to\u00a0bibliometric\u00a0analysis\u00a0to\u00a0drive\u00a0a\u00a0topdown,\u00a0topical\u00a0review\u00a0\nof\u00a0the\u00a0research\u00a0(M\u00f6rchen\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02008;\u00a0Small\u00a02006).\u00a0We\u00a0posed\u00a0the\u00a0following\u00a0specific\u00a0research\u00a0questions:\n1)\u00a0What\u00a0are\u00a0the\u00a0publication\u00a0growth\u00a0patterns\u00a0in\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0as\u00a0reflected\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0peerreviewed\u00a0literature?\u00a0\n2)\u00a0Who\u00a0is\u00a0contributing\u00a0to\u00a0research\u00a0in\u00a0this\u00a0field?\n23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30\n31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40\n41 42\n43\n44\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:0:1:NEW 19 Jun 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\n3 3)\u00a0How\u00a0are\u00a0authors\u00a0in\u00a0this\u00a0field\u00a0related\u00a0to\u00a0one\u00a0another?\n4)\u00a0What\u00a0are\u00a0the\u00a0key\u00a0translational\u00a0issues?\u00a0\nTo\u00a0answer\u00a0these\u00a0questions,\u00a0we\u00a0used\u00a0existing\u00a0methods\u00a0as\u00a0well\u00a0as\u00a0customized\u00a0innovative\u00a0methods\u00a0\nto\u00a0map\u00a0publication\u00a0trends\u00a0and\u00a0the\u00a0degree\u00a0to\u00a0which\u00a0the\u00a0relevant\u00a0literature\u00a0gains\u00a0new\u00a0author.\u00a0We\u00a0also\u00a0 incorporated\u00a0qualitative\u00a0analysis\u00a0of\u00a0MeSH\u00a0terms\u00a0to\u00a0understand\u00a0the\u00a0fields\u00a0in\u00a0which\u00a0authors\u00a0have\u00a0 published,\u00a0and\u00a0carried\u00a0out\u00a0a\u00a0clustering\u00a0of\u00a0articles\u00a0with\u00a0a\u00a0visualization\u00a0component\u00a0for\u00a0comparisons\u00a0 among\u00a0subfields\u00a0(Struble\u00a0&\u00a0Dharmanolla\u00a02004;\u00a0Yamamoto\u00a0&\u00a0Takagi\u00a02007). With\u00a0these\u00a0data,\u00a0we\u00a0 explore\u00a0the\u00a0historical\u00a0path\u00a0of\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0research\u00a0and\u00a0discuss\u00a0the\u00a0future\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0research\u00a0as\u00a0it\u00a0can\u00a0be\u00a0 expected\u00a0to\u00a0further\u00a0unfold.\nMethods\n1.\u00a0Publication\u00a0Patterns\nTo\u00a0calculate\u00a0basic\u00a0publication\u00a0trends\u00a0in\u00a0NiMCS,\u00a0we\u00a0created\u00a0the\u00a0following\u00a0PubMed\u00a0query\u00a0using\u00a0\nthe\u00a0Medical\u00a0Subject\u00a0Headings\u00a0(MeSH)\u00a0keyword\u00a0vocabulary:\u00a0\u201c[minimally\u00a0conscious\u00a0states]\u00a0and\u00a0 ([neuroimaging]\u00a0or\u00a0[magnetic\u00a0resonance\u00a0imaging]\u00a0or\u00a0[functional\u00a0neuroimaging])\u201d.\u00a0This\u00a0retrieved\u00a0all\u00a0 indexed\u00a0articles\u00a0within\u00a0PubMed\u00a0matching\u00a0the\u00a0subject\u00a0headings,\u00a0including\u00a0primary\u00a0research\u00a0as\u00a0well\u00a0as\u00a0 reviews\u00a0and\u00a0editorials.\u00a0We\u00a0also\u00a0documented\u00a0the\u00a0journals\u00a0in\u00a0which\u00a0they\u00a0were\u00a0published\u00a0(neuroscience,\u00a0 bioethics,\u00a0general\u00a0science).\u00a0We\u00a0determined\u00a0the\u00a0average\u00a0growth\u00a0rate\u00a0of\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0publications\u00a0per\u00a0year\u00a0in\u00a0 the\u00a0time\u00a0period\u00a0between\u00a02002\u00a0and\u00a02011,\u00a0the\u00a0last\u00a0full\u00a0year\u00a0of\u00a0data\u00a0at\u00a0the\u00a0time\u00a0this\u00a0project\u00a0was\u00a0conducted.\u00a0 In\u00a0addition\u00a0to\u00a0the\u00a0base\u00a0publication\u00a0rate,\u00a0we\u00a0calculated\u00a0the\u00a0average\u00a0number\u00a0of\u00a0authors\u00a0per\u00a0publication\u00a0in\u00a0\n45\n46\n47\n48 49 50 51 52 53 54\n55\n56\n57\n58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:0:1:NEW 19 Jun 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\n4 each\u00a0year\u00a0over\u00a0the\u00a0time\u00a0period\u00a0of\u00a0interest.\u00a0\u00a0For\u00a0comparison,\u00a0we\u00a0calculated\u00a0the\u00a0average\u00a0growth\u00a0rate\u00a0in\u00a0all\u00a0 biomedical\u00a0literature\u00a0(defined\u00a0for\u00a0the\u00a0purpose\u00a0of\u00a0this\u00a0study\u00a0as\u00a0all\u00a0papers\u00a0indexed\u00a0in\u00a0PubMed)\u00a0over\u00a0the\u00a0 same\u00a0time\u00a0period.\n2.\u00a0Author\u00a0Characteristics\u00a0\nTo\u00a0determine\u00a0the\u00a0rate\u00a0at\u00a0which\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0gains\u00a0new\u00a0researchers,\u00a0we\u00a0calculated\u00a0the\u00a0number\u00a0of\u00a0\nunique\u00a0authors\u00a0publishing\u00a0each\u00a0year\u00a0who\u00a0had\u00a0never\u00a0previously\u00a0published\u00a0within\u00a0the\u00a0discipline,\u00a0as\u00a0well\u00a0 as\u00a0the\u00a0number\u00a0of\u00a0unique\u00a0authors\u00a0publishing\u00a0each\u00a0year\u00a0who\u00a0had\u00a0not\u00a0published\u00a0within\u00a0the\u00a0discipline\u00a0in\u00a0 the\u00a0prior\u00a0three\u00a0years.\u00a0\nTo\u00a0determine\u00a0the\u00a0originating\u00a0specialty\u00a0of\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0authors,\u00a0we\u00a0created\u00a0a\u00a0script\u00a0that\u00a0utilizes\u00a0\nPubMed's\u00a0Entrez\u00a0API\u00a0to\u00a0aggregate\u00a0the\u00a0MeSH\u00a0terms\u00a0applied\u00a0to\u00a0the\u00a0authors'\u00a0entire\u00a0respective\u00a0body\u00a0of\u00a0 work\u00a0as\u00a0represented\u00a0in\u00a0PubMed\u00a0(Cheung,\u00a02012).\u00a0We\u00a0then\u00a0analyzed\u00a0the\u00a0variance\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0application\u00a0of\u00a0 MeSH\u00a0terms\u00a0to\u00a0each\u00a0of\u00a0these\u00a0authors'\u00a0respective\u00a0bodies\u00a0of\u00a0work.\u00a0We\u00a0contrasted\u00a0the\u00a0variance\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0 application\u00a0of\u00a0MeSH\u00a0terms\u00a0with\u00a0the\u00a0total\u00a0number\u00a0of\u00a0MeSH\u00a0terms\u00a0and\u00a0total\u00a0number\u00a0of\u00a0unique\u00a0MeSH\u00a0 terms\u00a0applied\u00a0to\u00a0each\u00a0of\u00a0data\u00a0set,\u00a0to\u00a0yield\u00a0a\u00a0measure\u00a0of\u00a0domain\u00a0breadth\u00a0versus\u00a0total\u00a0publishing\u00a0output\u00a0 for\u00a0all\u00a0authors\u00a0contributing\u00a0to\u00a0the\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0literature.\u00a0Then,\u00a0to\u00a0provide\u00a0individual\u00a0examples\u00a0of\u00a0 contributing\u00a0authors\u00a0from\u00a0various\u00a0domains,\u00a0we\u00a0randomly\u00a0selected\u00a010%\u00a0for\u00a0manual\u00a0analysis\u00a0of\u00a0subject\u00a0 specialities\u00a0as\u00a0expressed\u00a0by\u00a0MeSH.\n3.\u00a0Author\u00a0Interconnections\nWe\u00a0used\u00a0the\u00a0ISI\u00a0Web\u00a0of\u00a0Science\u00a0database\u00a0and\u00a0the\u00a0CiteSpace\u00a0and\u00a0Gephi\u00a0graph\u00a0visualization\u00a0\n66 67 68\n69\n70\n71 72 73 74\n75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83\n84\n85\n86\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:0:1:NEW 19 Jun 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\n5 packages\u00a0to\u00a0provide\u00a0a\u00a0measure\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0interconnections\u00a0of\u00a0authors\u00a0of\u00a0publications\u00a0retrieved\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0full\u00a0 database.\u00a0We\u00a0translated\u00a0our\u00a0PubMed\u00a0query\u00a0to\u00a0the\u00a0ISI\u00a0equivalent\u00a0terms\u00a0(\u201c\"minimally\u00a0conscious\"\u00a0and\u00a0 neuro*\u201d)\u00a0and\u00a0exported\u00a0the\u00a0results\u00a0to\u00a0CiteSpace\u00a0to\u00a0generate\u00a0a\u00a0meaningful\u00a0and\u00a0interpretable\u00a0graph.\u00a0An\u00a0 automatic\u00a0pruning\u00a0step\u00a0was\u00a0performed\u00a0in\u00a0CiteSpace\u00a0to\u00a0prioritize\u00a0strongly\u00a0connected\u00a0nodes1.\u00a0The\u00a0data\u00a0 were\u00a0then\u00a0exported\u00a0to\u00a0the\u00a0GraphML\u00a0format\u00a0used\u00a0by\u00a0the\u00a0Gephi\u00a0graphing\u00a0software\u00a0for\u00a0visualization.\u00a0 Except\u00a0where\u00a0otherwise\u00a0noted,\u00a0the\u00a0ForceAtlas2\u00a0graph\u00a0layout\u00a0algorithm\u00a0was\u00a0used,\u00a0with\u00a0colorcoded\u00a0 clustering\u00a0performed\u00a0using\u00a0Louvain\u00a0Modularity\u00a0and\u00a0node\u00a0weighting\u00a0by\u00a0eigenvector\u00a0centrality.\u00a0Two\u00a0 separate\u00a0graphs\u00a0were\u00a0generated:\n1)\u00a0A\u00a0map\u00a0of\u00a0author\u00a0collaborations\u00a0in\u00a0which\u00a0the\u00a0nodes\u00a0are\u00a0individual\u00a0researchers\u00a0and\u00a0the\u00a0edges\u00a0represent\u00a0 coauthorship.\n2)\u00a0A\u00a0map\u00a0of\u00a0article\u00a0usage\u00a0over\u00a0time\u00a0in\u00a0which\u00a0the\u00a0nodes\u00a0are\u00a0published\u00a0works\u00a0and\u00a0the\u00a0edges\u00a0represent\u00a0 citation.\u00a0The\u00a0top\u00a010%\u00a0of\u00a0articles\u00a0by\u00a0node\u00a0centrality\u00a0from\u00a0this\u00a0graph\u00a0were\u00a0reviewed\u00a0for\u00a0content,\u00a0and\u00a0the\u00a0 graph\u00a0was\u00a0manually\u00a0annotated\u00a0with\u00a0subtopic\u00a0descriptions\u00a0corresponding\u00a0to\u00a0groups\u00a0of\u00a0articles.\u00a0Graphs\u00a0 were\u00a0then\u00a0interpreted\u00a0qualitatively\u00a0using\u00a0visual\u00a0information\u00a0from\u00a0the\u00a0modularity\u00a0and\u00a0centrality\u00a0 weightings.\n4.\u00a0Clinical\u00a0Focus\n1 \u00a0This\u00a0pruning\u00a0step\u00a0was\u00a0performed\u00a0specifically\u00a0to\u00a0compress\u00a0the\u00a0graph\u00a0into\u00a0a\u00a0 viable\u00a01000px\u00a0horizontal\u00a0image,\u00a0which\u00a0can\u00a0be\u00a0easily\u00a0scanned\u00a0by\u00a0the\u00a0human\u00a0eye.\u00a0Data\u00a0were\u00a0pruned\u00a0using\u00a0a\u00a0ceiling\u00a0for\u00a0the\u00a0 percentage\u00a0of\u00a0articles\u00a0a\u00a0given\u00a0author\u00a0contributed\u00a0to\u00a0the\u00a0total\u00a0for\u00a0any\u00a0given\u00a0year\u00a0in\u00a0order\u00a0to\u00a0counteract\u00a0the\u00a0Matthew\u00a0Effect\u00a0 (Merton,\u00a01968)\u00a0and\u00a0then\u00a0compiled.\u00a0This\u00a0ceiling\u00a0was\u00a0adjusted\u00a0multiple\u00a0times\u00a0after\u00a0consultation\u00a0with\u00a0domain\u00a0experts\u00a0in\u00a0order\u00a0 to\u00a0ensure\u00a0that\u00a0it\u00a0adequately\u00a0represented\u00a0the\u00a0social\u00a0structure\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0domain.\u00a0The\u00a0unpruned\u00a0data\u00a0are\u00a0available\u00a0as\u00a0a\u00a0raw\u00a0 nodeandedge\u00a0graph\u00a0file\u00a0upon\u00a0request\u00a0for\u00a0readers\u00a0who\u00a0wish\u00a0to\u00a0have\u00a0a\u00a0100%\u00a0complete\u00a0representation\u00a0of\u00a0coauthorship\u00a0or\u00a0 cocitation\u00a0in\u00a0NiMCS.\n87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94\n95 96\n97 98 99 100 101\n102\n103\n1 2 3 4 5 6 7\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:0:1:NEW 19 Jun 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\n6 We\u00a0used\u00a0the\u00a0subset\u00a0of\u00a0Open\u00a0Access\u00a0articles\u00a0from\u00a0the\u00a0total\u00a0set\u00a0retrieved\u00a0for\u00a0fulltext\u00a0analysis\u00a0and\u00a0coded\u00a0 the\u00a0constituent\u00a0papers\u00a0for\u00a0three\u00a0factors:\n1)\u00a0Average\u00a0number\u00a0of\u00a0brain\u00a0injured\u00a0subjects\u00a0with\u00a0a\u00a0given\u00a0diagnosis.\u00a0We\u00a0created\u00a0a\u00a0schema\u00a0to\u00a0\norganize\u00a0the\u00a0different\u00a0descriptions\u00a0used\u00a0to\u00a0classify\u00a0patients\u00a0(e.g.,\u00a0traumatic\u00a0injury\u00a0and\u00a0nontraumatic\u00a0 injury,\u00a0minimally\u00a0conscious,\u00a0and\u00a0persistent\u00a0vegetative\u00a0state),\u00a0\n2)\u00a0Nature\u00a0and\u00a0extent\u00a0of\u00a0discussion\u00a0of\u00a0clinical\u00a0implications,\u00a0including\u00a0economic\u00a0impact.\u00a0Each\u00a0\nnew\u00a0theme\u00a0was\u00a0counted\u00a0once\u00a0per\u00a0paper.\n3)\u00a0Paradigms\u00a0and\u00a0stimuli\u00a0used\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0research\u00a0protocols.\nResults\n1.\u00a0Publication\u00a0Patterns\nWe\u00a0retrieved\u00a0311\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0papers\u00a0for\u00a0analysis,\u00a0of\u00a0which\u00a0141\u00a0(45%)\u00a0were\u00a0primary\u00a0research\u00a0\narticles.\u00a081\u00a0(26%)\u00a0represented\u00a0case\u00a0studies.\u00a0\u00a0Sixtyone\u00a0(20%)\u00a0were\u00a0review\u00a0articles,\u00a0and\u00a0the\u00a0remaining\u00a028\u00a0 (9%)\u00a0editorials\u00a0and\u00a0comments.\u00a0The\u00a0overall\u00a0number\u00a0of\u00a0these\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0publications\u00a0between\u00a02002\u00a0and\u00a0 2011\u00a0increased\u00a0at\u00a0an\u00a0average\u00a0rate\u00a0of\u00a027%\u00a0per\u00a0year\u00a0(Figure\u00a01).\u00a0\nFigure\u00a01\u00a0about\u00a0here\nThe\u00a0average\u00a0number\u00a0of\u00a0authors\u00a0per\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0papers\u00a0increased\u00a0at\u00a0an\u00a0average\u00a0rate\u00a0of\u00a033%\u00a0per\u00a0year\u00a0\nfrom\u00a01.3\u00a0in\u00a02002\u00a0to\u00a05.5\u00a0in\u00a02011,\u00a0climbing\u00a0linearly\u00a0across\u00a0the\u00a0time\u00a0period.\u00a0\u00a0The\u00a0number\u00a0of\u00a0authors\u00a0\n104 105\n106 107 108\n109 110\n111\n112\n113\n114\n115\n116\n117 118 119 120\n121\n122 123\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:0:1:NEW 19 Jun 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\n7 publishing\u00a0in\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0who\u00a0had\u00a0never\u00a0published\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0domain\u00a0before\u00a0decreased\u00a0from\u00a092%\u00a0in\u00a02003\u00a0 (when\u00a0most\u00a0researchers\u00a0were\u00a0\u201cnew\u201d)\u00a0to\u00a067%\u00a0in\u00a02011.\u00a0Therefore,\u00a0twothirds\u00a0of\u00a0all\u00a0authors\u00a0currently\u00a0 publishing\u00a0in\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0are\u00a0likely\u00a0first\u00a0time\u00a0authors.\u00a0Meanwhile,\u00a0the\u00a0number\u00a0of\u00a0authors\u00a0publishing\u00a0in\u00a0 NiMCS\u00a0who\u00a0had\u00a0not\u00a0published\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0domain\u00a0during\u00a0the\u00a0preceding\u00a0three\u00a0years\u00a0held\u00a0fairly\u00a0consistent\u00a0at\u00a0 80\u00b13%\u00a0since\u00a02007\u00a0(Table\u00a01).\u00a0\nTable\u00a01\u00a0about\u00a0here\n2.\u00a0Author\u00a0Characteristics\n\u00a0Despite\u00a0being\u00a0a\u00a0narrowly\u00a0defined\u00a0subfield\u00a0within\u00a0clinical\u00a0neuroscience,\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0authors\u00a0come\u00a0\nfrom\u00a0a\u00a0very\u00a0diverse\u00a0set\u00a0of\u00a0background\u00a0subject\u00a0areas\u00a0according\u00a0to\u00a0PubMed's\u00a0MeSH\u00a0vocabulary.\u00a0Few\u00a0 MeSH\u00a0terms,\u00a0among\u00a0them\u00a0\u201cselfhelp\u00a0devices\u201d\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cdecisionmaking,\u201d\u00a0are\u00a0common\u00a0to\u00a0multiple\u00a0authors.\u00a0 Other\u00a0contributing\u00a0specialties\u00a0include\u00a0\u201cQuadriplegia,\u00a0Nerve\u00a0Growth,\u00a0Alzheimer\u00a0Disease\u201d\u00a0(MA\u00a0Bruno),\u00a0 \u201cSleep,\u00a0Pain\u201d\u00a0(M\u00a0Boly),\u00a0\u201cNeurophils,\u00a0Anesthesia\u201d\u00a0(M\u00a0Lamy),\u00a0\u201cCommunication\u00a0Aids,\u00a0Behavioral\u00a0 Therapy\u201d\u00a0(MF\u00a0O'Reilly),\u00a0and\u00a0\u201cSleep,\u00a0Memory\u201d\u00a0(M\u00a0Schabus).\u00a0The\u00a0variance\u00a0in\u00a0assignment\u00a0of\u00a0MeSH\u00a0 terms\u00a0to\u00a0each\u00a0author's\u00a0work\u00a0is\u00a0provided\u00a0in\u00a0Table\u00a02,\u00a0and\u00a0the\u00a0raw\u00a0data\u00a0containing\u00a0term\u00a0counts\u00a0for\u00a0each\u00a0 author\u00a0is\u00a0available\u00a0upon\u00a0request.\n3.\u00a0Author\u00a0Interconnections\nCoauthorship\u00a0graph\u00a0computations\u00a0illustrate\u00a0that\u00a0the\u00a0most\u00a0prominent\u00a0author\u00a0(eigenvector\u00a0\ncentrality\u00a0=\u00a01)\u00a0largely\u00a0publishes\u00a0with\u00a0members\u00a0of\u00a0his\u00a0own\u00a0research\u00a0team.\u00a0Similar\u00a0separate\u00a0author\u00a0\n124 125 126 127 128\n129\n130\n131\n132\n133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140\n141\n142\n143 144\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:0:1:NEW 19 Jun 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\n8 clusters\u00a0are\u00a0formed\u00a0for\u00a0two\u00a0other\u00a0prominent\u00a0authors\u00a0with\u00a0eigenvector\u00a0centrality\u00a0=\u00a00.032\u00a0and\u00a00.042\u00a0and\u00a0 their\u00a0within\u00a0group\u00a0coauthors..\u00a0These\u00a0and\u00a0other\u00a0highdegree\u00a0nodes\u00a0bridging\u00a0multiple\u00a0clusters\u00a0are\u00a0 labelled\u00a0on\u00a0Figure\u00a02.\nFigure\u00a02\u00a0about\u00a0here\nThe\u00a0cocitation\u00a0graph\u00a0reveals\u00a0dependencies\u00a0between\u00a0disciplines\u00a0in\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0(Figure\u00a03).\u00a0The\u00a0lower\u00a0\nportion\u00a0of\u00a0Figure\u00a03\u00a0shows\u00a0a\u00a0long\u00a0tail\u00a0of\u00a0lowlevel\u00a0research\u00a0into\u00a0unconscious\u00a0stimuli\u00a0and\u00a0some\u00a0 generalized\u00a0studies\u00a0of\u00a0brain\u00a0function\u00a0using\u00a0positron\u00a0emission\u00a0tomography\u00a0(PET).\u00a0These\u00a0both\u00a0inform\u00a0 bioethical\u00a0and\u00a0philosophical\u00a0work\u00a0on\u00a0the\u00a0neuroscience\u00a0of\u00a0consciousness.\u00a0This\u00a0bioethics\u00a0literature\u00a0is\u00a0 most\u00a0closely\u00a0related\u00a0to\u00a0clinical\u00a0neuroscience\u00a0in\u00a0that\u00a0it\u00a0focuses\u00a0specifically\u00a0on\u00a0differentiating\u00a0PVS\u00a0and\u00a0 MCS,\u00a0and\u00a0on\u00a0issues\u00a0around\u00a0communication\u00a0with\u00a0patients\u00a0by\u00a0measuring\u00a0functional\u00a0brain\u00a0activity.\u00a0The\u00a0 most\u00a0frequently\u00a0cited\u00a0papers\u00a0(corresponding\u00a0to\u00a0increasing\u00a0node\u00a0size)\u00a0in\u00a0this\u00a0domain\u00a0are\u00a0primarily\u00a0 published\u00a0between\u00a02000\u00a0and\u00a02005.\u00a0\nFigure\u00a03\u00a0about\u00a0here\n4.\u00a0Clinical\u00a0Focus\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0Research\nIn\u00a0the\u00a0open\u00a0access\u00a0subset\u00a0of\u00a032\u00a0papers,\u00a0different\u00a0levels\u00a0of\u00a0granularity\u00a0were\u00a0used\u00a0to\u00a0describe\u00a0\nlevels\u00a0of\u00a0consciousness\u00a0of\u00a0patientparticipants.\u00a0Some\u00a0publications\u00a0dissociated\u00a0MCS\u00a0and\u00a0PVS\u00a0clearly,\u00a0 while\u00a0others\u00a0combined\u00a0patients\u00a0into\u00a0a\u00a0single\u00a0\u201cnoncommunicative\u201d\u00a0group,\u00a0and\u00a0contrasted\u00a0them\u00a0only\u00a0 with\u00a0healthy\u00a0control\u00a0subjects.\u00a0We\u00a0created\u00a0the\u00a0schema\u00a0displayed\u00a0in\u00a0Figure\u00a04\u00a0to\u00a0manage\u00a0the\u00a0different\u00a0 descriptions\u00a0for\u00a0the\u00a0purpose\u00a0of\u00a0this\u00a0comparison.\nFigure\u00a04\u00a0about\u00a0here\n145 146 147\n148\n149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156\n157\n158\n159\n160 161 162 163 164\n165\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:0:1:NEW 19 Jun 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\n9 Articles\u00a0reported\u00a0approximately\u00a0equal\u00a0numbers\u00a0of\u00a0PVS\u00a0and\u00a0MCS\u00a0subjects,\u00a0with\u00a0a\u00a0majority\u00a0of\u00a0\nMCS\u00a0subjects\u00a0categorized\u00a0as\u00a0having\u00a0a\u00a0traumatic\u00a0injury.\u00a0The\u00a0mean\u00a0number\u00a0of\u00a0noncommunicative\u00a0 subjects\u00a0per\u00a0study\u00a0was\u00a09,\u00a0while\u00a0the\u00a0mean\u00a0number\u00a0of\u00a0healthy\u00a0subjects\u00a0was\u00a018.\nOf\u00a0the\u00a032\u00a0publications\u00a0analyzed\u00a0qualitatively,\u00a015\u00a0were\u00a0primary\u00a0research\u00a0reports.\u00a0Of\u00a0the\u00a0primary\u00a0\nresearch\u00a0articles,\u00a08\u00a0(53%)\u00a0featured\u00a0some\u00a0form\u00a0of\u00a0clinical\u00a0discussion;\u00a0100%\u00a0of\u00a0publications\u00a0not\u00a0reporting\u00a0 primary\u00a0research\u00a0contained\u00a0discussion\u00a0of\u00a0clinical\u00a0issues.\u00a0Clinical\u00a0assessment\u00a0was\u00a0the\u00a0dominant\u00a0theme\u00a0 across\u00a0all\u00a0types\u00a0of\u00a0papers\u00a0studied\u00a0(N=13/32).\u00a0We\u00a0also\u00a0noted\u00a0specific\u00a0discussions\u00a0of\u00a0recovery\u00a0of\u00a0 consciousness\u00a0(N=6/32),\u00a0ethical\u00a0decisionmaking\u00a0in\u00a0patient\u00a0care\u00a0(N=5/32),\u00a0and\u00a0clinical\u00a0management\u00a0by\u00a0 the\u00a0bedside\u00a0care\u00a0(N=2/3).\u00a0Three\u00a0nonprimary\u00a0research\u00a0articles\u00a0discussed\u00a0economic\u00a0implications.\u00a0For\u00a0 example:\n\u2026\u00a0[we]\u00a0believe\u00a0costs\u00a0should\u00a0not\u00a0figure\u00a0as\u00a0a\u00a0priority\u00a0in\u00a0an\u00a0ethical\u00a0discussion,\u00a0and\u00a0we\u00a0do\u00a0not\u00a0 believe\u00a0that\u00a0indefinite\u00a0continuation\u00a0of\u00a0lifesupport\u00a0is\u00a0the\u00a0only\u00a0ethical\u00a0option\u00a0(Panksepp\u00a0et\u00a0 al.,\u00a02007.\u00a0Bioethics\u00a0review\u00a0article).\nOf\u00a0the\u00a0papers\u00a0reporting\u00a0stimuli\u00a0used\u00a0as\u00a0part\u00a0of\u00a0a\u00a0human\u00a0subjects\u00a0experiment,\u00a08\u00a0described\u00a0resting\u00a0\nstate\u00a0activations;\u00a07\u00a0described\u00a0experiments\u00a0involving\u00a0sensorimotor\u00a0and\u00a0verbal\u00a0stimuli,\u00a0and\u00a0spatial\u00a0 navigation.\nDiscussion\n166 167 168\n169 170 171 172 173 174 175\n176\n177 178 179\n180\n181 182 183\n184\n185\n186\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:0:1:NEW 19 Jun 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\n10\nWe\u00a0applied\u00a0sophisticated\u00a0bibliometric\u00a0and\u00a0scientometric\u00a0methods\u00a0to\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0publications\u00a0to\u00a0\ncharacterize\u00a0the\u00a0growth\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0field\u00a0in\u00a0terms\u00a0of\u00a0output,\u00a0author\u00a0characteristics\u00a0and\u00a0origins,\u00a0and\u00a0 focus.\u00a0In\u00a0light\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0possibility\u00a0that\u00a0advances\u00a0in\u00a0this\u00a0domain\u00a0might\u00a0well\u00a0revolutionize\u00a0the\u00a0health\u00a0care\u00a0of\u00a0 people\u00a0with\u00a0acquired\u00a0brain\u00a0injuries\u00a0and\u00a0disorders\u00a0of\u00a0consciousness\u00a0(Fins\u00a0and\u00a0Illes\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02008),\u00a0and\u00a0the\u00a0 acute\u00a0media\u00a0attention\u00a0given\u00a0to\u00a0each\u00a0small\u00a0step\u00a0along\u00a0the\u00a0research\u00a0trajectory,\u00a0we\u00a0were\u00a0motivated\u00a0to\u00a0map\u00a0 the\u00a0academic\u00a0landscape\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0field\u00a0and\u00a0provide\u00a0an\u00a0empirical\u00a0perspective\u00a0on\u00a0its\u00a0trajectory.\u00a0We\u00a0used\u00a0both\u00a0 existing\u00a0tools\u00a0(Chen\u00a0et\u00a0al.,\u00a02010)\u00a0and\u00a0customized\u00a0methods\u00a0to\u00a0achieve\u00a0this\u00a0goal.\nWe\u00a0found\u00a0that\u00a0the\u00a0number\u00a0of\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0publications\u00a0per\u00a0year\u00a0is\u00a0increasing,\u00a0and\u00a0that\u00a0there\u00a0are\u00a0\nconventional,\u00a0upward\u00a0trends\u00a0for\u00a0the\u00a0number\u00a0of\u00a0authors\u00a0per\u00a0paper\u00a0and\u00a0for\u00a0the\u00a0rate\u00a0at\u00a0which\u00a0new\u00a0authors\u00a0 are\u00a0added\u00a0(the\u00a0\u201creplacement\u00a0rate\u201d).\u00a0These\u00a0are\u00a0consistent\u00a0with\u00a0the\u00a0establishment\u00a0and\u00a0subsequent\u00a0 formalization\u00a0of\u00a0biomedical\u00a0subdisciplines.\u00a0The\u00a0content\u00a0analysis\u00a0reinforces\u00a0the\u00a0fact\u00a0that\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0is,\u00a0in\u00a0 large\u00a0part,\u00a0a\u00a0clinical\u00a0research\u00a0endeavour.\u00a0There\u00a0is\u00a0an\u00a0unusually\u00a0large\u00a0amount\u00a0of\u00a0clinical\u00a0and\u00a0ethical\u00a0 discussion\u00a0compared\u00a0to\u00a0other\u00a0similar\u00a0analyses\u00a0of\u00a0primary\u00a0research\u00a0in\u00a0neuroscience\u00a0(Garnett\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02011).\u00a0 Descriptions\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0consciousness\u00a0of\u00a0patients\u00a0are\u00a0highly\u00a0variable.\u00a0Like\u00a0the\u00a0pool\u00a0of\u00a0stimuli\u00a0that\u00a0is\u00a0small\u00a0 and\u00a0unchanging,\u00a0subject\u00a0numbers\u00a0are\u00a0also\u00a0low\u00a0and\u00a0steady\u00a0per\u00a0study.\u00a0The\u00a0highly\u00a0focused\u00a0coauthorship\u00a0 patterns\u00a0suggest\u00a0that\u00a0NiMCS\u00a0has\u00a0not\u00a0yet\u00a0become\u00a0widespread\u00a0as\u00a0a\u00a0subdomain\u00a0within\u00a0clinical\u00a0 neuroscience.\u00a0Despite\u00a0the\u00a0substantial\u00a0author\u00a0replacement\u00a0rate,\u00a0there\u00a0appears\u00a0to\u00a0be\u00a0only\u00a0a\u00a0small\u00a0cohort\u00a0of\u00a0 thought\u00a0leaders\u00a0and\u00a0few\u00a0new\u00a0themes\u00a0beyond\u00a0clinical\u00a0assessment\u00a0that\u00a0would\u00a0fundamentally\u00a0expand\u00a0its\u00a0 landscape.\u00a0\nWill\u00a0the\u00a0science\u00a0of\u00a0consciousness\u00a0realize\u00a0its\u00a0hope\u00a0to\u00a0change\u00a0patient\u00a0management\u00a0after\u00a0brain\u00a0\ntrauma\u00a0as\u00a0some\u00a0have\u00a0debated\u00a0(Fins\u00a0and\u00a0Illes\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02008;\u00a0Owen\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02006,\u00a02008;\u00a0Laureys\u00a0et\u00a0al.\u00a02012)?\u00a0\u00a0 Time\u00a0will\u00a0tell,\u00a0and\u00a0further\u00a0analyses\u00a0such\u00a0as\u00a0those\u00a0conducted\u00a0here\u00a0will\u00a0provide\u00a0the\u00a0lens\u00a0for\u00a0continued\u00a0 inquiry.\u00a0But,\u00a0even\u00a0if\u00a0the\u00a0domain\u00a0cannot\u00a0deliver\u00a0on\u00a0its\u00a0health\u00a0care\u00a0goal\u00a0given\u00a0potentially\u00a0insurmountable\u00a0\n187 188 189 190 191 192 193\n194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205\n206 207 208 209\nPeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:0:1:NEW 19 Jun 2013)\nR ev ie w in g M an\nus cr ip t\n11\ncomplexities\u00a0of\u00a0consciousness,\u00a0meaningfulness\u00a0of\u00a0communication,\u00a0scarce\u00a0resources\u00a0and\u00a0other\u00a0variables,\u00a0 there\u00a0is\u00a0tremendous\u00a0knowledge\u00a0to\u00a0be\u00a0gained.\u00a0We\u00a0are\u00a0learning\u00a0deeply\u00a0about\u00a0the\u00a0meaning\u00a0of\u00a0signals\u00a0from\u00a0 the\u00a0brain\u00a0in\u00a0health\u00a0and\u00a0in\u00a0diseases\u00a0of\u00a0the\u00a0central\u00a0nervous\u00a0system,\u00a0about\u00a0the\u00a0boundaries\u00a0and\u00a0limits\u00a0of\u00a0this\u00a0 neuroscience\u00a0research,\u00a0and\u00a0about\u00a0the\u00a0importance\u00a0of\u00a0balanced\u00a0communication\u00a0in\u00a0the\u00a0dissemination\u00a0of\u00a0 information\u00a0and\u00a0neuroliteracy\u00a0among\u00a0the\u00a0public.",
    "v1_text": "results : methods : discussion : We applied sophisticated bibliometric and scientometric methods to NiMCS publications to characterize the growth of the NiMCS field in terms of output, author characteristics and origins, and focus. In light of the possibility that advances in this domain might well revolutionize the health care of people with acquired brain injuries and disorders of consciousness (Fins and Illes et al. 2008), and the acute media attention given to steps along the research trajectory, we were motivated to map the academic landscape of the field and provide an empirical perspective on its trajectory. We used both existing tools (Chen et al., 2010) and customized methods to achieve this goal. It is important to note that bibliometrics, while a powerful and well-researched means of exploring the published scholarly record, are imperfect for representing informal contributions to science (i.e. not indexed by PubMed and/or Thomson-Reuters) or those which have been published very recently due to the procedural lag in citations. These limitations are not specific to our research, and we have attempted to address them by not including data newer than 2011. At the same time, we deliberately did not try to normalize citation totals of articles for the time since their publication; just as we did not explicitly rank articles using these data, we sought to obtain historical data pertaining to the development of NiMCS research to date. Additionally, we did not perform any manual disambiguation of author names. When our data source failed to resolve the 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:2:0:NEW 18 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t difference between \u201cJohn Smith\u201d and \u201cJ O Smith\u201d we made no effort to correct this4, thus some prolific authors may not have all of their published material assigned to the same name string, and their ranking in our graph may be affected by a small amount. Additionally, the findings from our full-text content analysis may be biased toward more recent publications and may not be entirely representative of the subject domain for some authors due to our decision to include only open access research. However, given that much of the research under consideration falls roughly within the time period that the US National Institutes of Health PubMed Central deposit mandate has been in effect, we do not believe that it has significantly affected our results, and include this statement to acknowledge that our selection was not strictly random. Finally, because this was an exploratory study describing the growth of a new field, we do not have adequate statistical baselines for much of the work we have undertaken, and cannot make many comparisons. With these limitations in mind, we found that the number of NiMCS publications per year is increasing, and that there are conventional, upward trends for the number of authors per paper and for the rate at which new authors are added (the \u201creplacement rate\u201d). These are consistent with the establishment and subsequent formalization of biomedical subdisciplines. The content analysis reinforces the fact that NiMCS is, in large part, a clinical research endeavour. There is an unusually large amount of clinical and ethical discussion compared to other similar analyses of primary research in neuroscience (Garnett et al. 2011). Descriptions of the consciousness of patients are highly variable. Like the pool of stimuli that is small and unchanging, subject numbers are also low and steady per study. The highly focused co-authorship patterns suggest that NiMCS has not yet become widespread as a subdomain within clinical neuroscience. Despite the substantial author replacement rate, there appears to be only a small cohort of thought leaders and few new themes beyond clinical assessment that would fundamentally expand its landscape. 4 Until proposed solutions to this issue such as http://orcid.org/ enjoy wider uptake, we believe that it is methodologically cleaner not to attempt to resolve ambiguous author names manually. 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 14 15 16 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:2:0:NEW 18 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t Of the findings from our content analysis, many \u2013 such as the limited clinical and ethical discussion in primary research, and the number of subjects per study \u2013 were also largely confirmatory. This does not diminish their value, particularly when taken together with some of our author-level metrics. Notice that S. Laureys is the most central node in the co-authorship graph; he is also the leader of the Coma Science Group in the Department of Neurology at the Liege University Hospital in Belgium, and the cluster of co-authors surrounding him in the graph is comprised largely of his own graduate students. This is consistent with Abassi et al. (2011), who determined that working with many students is generally a more straightforward way to accumulate citations \u2013 academic capital \u2013 than working with other well-performing scholars. NiMCS research is also necessarily constrained in terms of actual capital, dependent on a teaching hospital to accommodate its teaching component. Thus, one should not necessarily expect a large cohort of thought leaders. This is particularly true when the existing thought leaders are distributed across international borders, which generally results in a diminished citation effect from collaboration(Abassi, 2013). However, there is no reason to believe that this is unique to NiMCS research. Interdisciplinarity in science is increasing generally (Silva et al., 2013) and, in this and other disciplines where it is functionally difficult to contribute at the perceived top-end of the scientific dialogue, it is more productive \u2013 at least from a bibliometric perspective \u2013 to look at more diverse contributions as we have done. Will the science of consciousness realize its hope to change patient management after brain trauma as some have debated (Fins and Illes et al. 2008; Owen et al. 2006, 2008; Laureys et al. 2012)? Time will tell, and further analyses such as those conducted here will provide the lens for continued inquiry. But, even if the domain cannot deliver on its health care goal given potentially insurmountable complexities of consciousness, meaningfulness of communication, scarce resources and other variables, there is tremendous knowledge to be gained. We are 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:2:0:NEW 18 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t learning deeply about the meaning of signals from the brain in health and in diseases of the central nervous system, about the boundaries and limits of this neuroscience research, and about the importance of balanced communication in the dissemination of information and neuroliteracy among the public. 2 author characteristics : To determine the rate at which NiMCS gains new researchers, we calculated the number of unique authors publishing each year who had never previously published within the discipline, as well as the number of unique authors publishing each year who had not published within the discipline in the prior three years. To determine the originating specialty of NiMCS authors, we created a script that utilizes PubMed's Entrez API to aggregate the MeSH terms applied to the authors' entire respective body of work as represented in PubMed (Cheung, 2012). We then calculated the variance in the application of MeSH terms to each of these authors' respective bodies of work. We contrasted the variance in the application of MeSH terms with the total number of MeSH terms, and total number of unique MeSH terms applied to each data set to yield a measure of domain breadth versus total publishing output for all authors contributing to the NiMCS literature. Then, to provide individual examples of contributing authors from various domains, we randomly selected 10% of these authors for manual analysis of subject specialities as expressed by MeSH. 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:2:0:NEW 18 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t Despite being a narrowly defined subfield within clinical neuroscience, NiMCS authors come from a very diverse set of background subject areas according to PubMed's MeSH vocabulary. Few MeSH terms, among them \u201cself-help devices\u201d and \u201cdecision-making,\u201d are common to multiple authors. Other contributing specialties include \u201cQuadriplegia, Nerve Growth, Alzheimer Disease\u201d (MA Bruno), \u201cSleep, Pain\u201d (M Boly), \u201cNeurophils, Anesthesia\u201d (M 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:2:0:NEW 18 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t Lamy), \u201cCommunication Aids, Behavioral Therapy\u201d (MF O'Reilly), and \u201cSleep, Memory\u201d (M Schabus). The variance in assignment of MeSH terms to each author's work is provided in Table 2, and the raw data containing term counts for each author is available upon request. 3 author interconnections : We used the ISI Web of Science database and the CiteSpace and Gephi graph visualization packages to provide a measure of the interconnections of authors of publications retrieved in the full database. We translated our PubMed query to the ISI equivalent terms (\u201c\"minimally conscious\" and neuro*\u201d), retrieved matching articles2, and exported the results to CiteSpace to generate a meaningful and interpretable graph. An automatic pruning step was performed in CiteSpace to prioritize strongly connected nodes3. The data were then exported to the GraphML format used by the Gephi graphing software for visualization. Except where otherwise noted, the ForceAtlas2 graph layout algorithm was used (to improve readability by emphasizing nodes' relationship with their \u201cneighbours\u201d), with color-coded clustering performed using Louvain Modularity (designed to find communities within ad-hoc networks; Blondel et al., 2008) and node weighting by eigenvector centrality. Two separate graphs were generated: 1) A map of author collaborations in which the nodes are individual researchers and the edges represent co-authorship. 2) A map of article usage over time in which the nodes are published works and the edges represent citation. The top 10% of articles by node centrality from this graph were reviewed for 2 We verified that the ISI query result set was not more than 20% different from the PubMed query result, determined to be an acceptable margin of error for cross-database comparison. 3 This pruning step was performed specifically to compress the graph into a viable 1000px horizontal image, which can be easily scanned by the human eye. Data were pruned using a percentage cutoff (15%) for the most-cited articles within the dataset for a given year, rather than pruning the entire dataset, in order to surface \"smaller\" contributions on a year-by-year basis and provide a counter to the Matthew Effect (Merton, 1968) and then compiled. This ceiling was adjusted multiple times after consultation with domain experts in order to ensure that it adequately represented the social structure of the domain. The unpruned data are available as a raw node-and-edge graph file upon request for readers who wish to have a 100% complete representation of co-authorship or co-citation in NiMCS. 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:2:0:NEW 18 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t content, and the graph was manually annotated with subtopic descriptions corresponding to groups of articles. Graphs were then interpreted qualitatively using visual information from the modularity and centrality weightings. Co-authorship graph computations illustrate that the most prominent author (eigenvector centrality = 1) largely publishes with members of his own research team. Similar separate author clusters are formed for two other prominent authors with eigenvector centrality = 0.032 and 0.042 and their within group co-authors. These and other high-degree nodes bridging multiple clusters are labelled on Figure 2. The distribution of authors' centrality values is long-tailed, with only two authors out of the top 58 (3.4%) having centrality greater than 0.5 and only six (10.3%) having centrality greater than 0.25. The co-citation graph reveals dependencies between disciplines in NiMCS (Figure 3). The lower portion of Figure 3 shows another kind of \u201clong tail\u201d of straightforwardly empirical research into unconscious stimuli and some generalized studies of brain function using positron emission tomography (PET). These both inform bioethical and philosophical work on the neuroscience of consciousness. This bioethics literature is most closely related to clinical neuroscience in that it focuses specifically on differentiating PVS and MCS, and on issues around communication with patients by measuring functional brain activity. The most frequently cited papers (corresponding to increasing node size) in this domain were primarily published between 2000 and 2005, consistent with the levelling off of the publication growth rate. 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:2:0:NEW 18 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t corresponding author: : Judy Illes, PhD, FRSC, FCAHS Professor of Neurology Director, National Core for Neuroethics The University of British Columbia Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine 2211 Wesbrook Mall, Koerner S124 Vancouver, BC V6T 2B5 CANADA Tel: 604.822.0746 http://www.neuroethicscanada.ca 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:2:0:NEW 18 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t 1 publication patterns : To calculate basic publication trends in NiMCS, we created the following PubMed query using the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) keyword vocabulary: \u201c[minimally conscious states] and ([neuroimaging] or [magnetic resonance imaging] or [functional neuroimaging])\u201d. This retrieved all indexed articles within PubMed matching the subject headings1, including primary research as well as reviews and editorials. We also documented the journals in which they were published (neuroscience, bioethics, general science). We determined the mean growth rate of NiMCS publications per year in the time period between 2002 and 2011; data from 2012 was not 1 PubMed convention is such that formatting a search in this way will search both matching MeSH headings and matching free-text strings, in order to broaden coverage. 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 1 2 3 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:2:0:NEW 18 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t included as it was too recent to provide reliable metrics (Bornmann, 2013). Because our analysis covered a relatively short period, we also determined the change in growth rate each year, in order to determine whether this rate changed meaningfully within the timeframe. In addition to the base publication rate, we calculated the mean number of authors per publication in each year over the time period of interest. For comparison, we calculated the mean growth rate in all biomedical literature, defined for the purpose of this study as all papers indexed in PubMed over the same time period. We retrieved 311 NiMCS papers for analysis, of which 141 (45%) were primary research articles. 81 (26%) represented case studies. Sixty-one (20%) were review articles, and the 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:2:0:NEW 18 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t remaining 28 (9%) editorials and comments. The overall number of these NiMCS publications between 2002 and 2011 increased at an average rate of 27% per year (Figure 1). However, the growth rate was not linear across this time period, increasing by over 100% between 2002 and 2005, then falling to an average rate of 7% per year between 2005 and 2011. When shifting this comparison by one year, the growth rate between 2006 and 2011 was 11%. By comparison, the growth rate of all biomedical literature (defined for the purpose of this study as all papers indexed in PubMed) over the time period of 2005 to 2011 is approximately 7%. Using 2005 as the benchmark, the NiMCS growth since is essentially flat when normalized to the more broadly defined rate of scientific \u201cinflation.\u201d The average number of authors per NiMCS papers increased at an average rate of 33% per year from 1.3 in 2002 to 5.5 in 2011, linearly across the time period. The number of authors publishing in NiMCS who had never published in the domain before decreased from 92% in 2003 (when most researchers were \u201cnew\u201d) to 67% in 2011. Therefore, two-thirds of all authors currently publishing in NiMCS are likely first time authors. Meanwhile, the number of authors publishing in NiMCS who had not published in the domain during the preceding three years held fairly consistent at 80\u00b13% since 2007 (Table 1). 4 clinical focus : We used the subset of Open Access articles from the total set retrieved for full-text analysis and coded the constituent papers for three factors: 1) Average number of brain injured subjects with a given diagnosis. We created a schema to organize the different descriptions used to classify patients (e.g., traumatic injury and nontraumatic injury, minimally conscious, and persistent vegetative state), 2) Nature and extent of discussion of clinical implications, including economic impact. Each new theme was counted once per paper. 3) Paradigms and stimuli used in the research protocols. In the open access subset of 32 papers, different levels of granularity were used to describe levels of consciousness of patient-participants. Some publications dissociated MCS and PVS clearly, while others combined patients into a single \u201cnon-communicative\u201d group, and contrasted them only with healthy control subjects. We created the schema displayed in Figure 4 to manage the different descriptions for the purpose of this comparison. Articles reported approximately equal numbers of PVS and MCS subjects, with a majority of MCS subjects categorized as having a traumatic injury. The mean number of noncommunicative subjects per study was 9, while the mean number of healthy subjects was 18. Of the 32 publications analyzed qualitatively, 15 were primary research reports. Of the primary research articles, 8 (53%) featured some form of clinical discussion; 100% of publications not reporting primary research contained discussion of clinical issues. Clinical assessment was the dominant theme across all types of papers studied (N=13/32). We also noted specific discussions of recovery of consciousness (N=6/32), ethical decision-making in patient care (N=5/32), and clinical management by the bedside care (N=2/3). Three non-primary research articles discussed economic implications. For example: \u2026 [we] believe costs should not figure as a priority in an ethical discussion, and we do not believe that indefinite continuation of life-support is the only ethical option (Panksepp et al., 2007. Bioethics review article). Of the papers reporting stimuli used as part of a human subjects experiment, 8 described 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:2:0:NEW 18 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t resting state activations; 7 described experiments involving sensorimotor and verbal stimuli, and spatial navigation. publication trends in neuroimaging of minimally conscious states : Judy Illes1, Alex Garnett2, Grace Lee1 1 National Core for Neuroethics Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada 2 Simon Fraser University Library 5089 8888 University Drive Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6",
    "v2_text": "discussion : We applied sophisticated bibliometric and scientometric methods to NiMCS publications to characterize the growth of the NiMCS field in terms of output, author characteristics and origins, and focus. In light of the possibility that advances in this domain might well revolutionize the health care of people with acquired brain injuries and disorders of consciousness (Fins and Illes et al. 2008), and the acute media attention given to steps along the research trajectory, we were motivated to map the academic landscape of the field and provide an empirical perspective on its trajectory. We used both existing tools (Chen et al., 2010) and customized methods to achieve this goal. It is important to note that bibliometrics, while a powerful and well-researched means of exploring the published scholarly record, are imperfect for representing informal contributions to science (i.e. not indexed by PubMed and/or Thomson-Reuters) or those which have been published very recently due to the procedural lag in citations. These limitations are not specific to our research, and we have attempted to address them by not including data newer than 2011. At the same time, we deliberately did not try to normalize citation totals of articles for the time since their publication; just as we did not explicitly rank articles using these data, we sought to obtain historical data pertaining to the development of NiMCS research to date. Additionally, we did not perform any manual disambiguation of author names. When our data source failed to resolve the difference between \u201cJohn 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t Smith\u201d and \u201cJ O Smith\u201d we made no effort to correct this4, thus some prolific authors may not have all of their published material assigned to the same name string, and their ranking in our graph may be affected by a small amount. Additionally, the findings from our full-text content analysis may be biased toward more recent publications and may not be entirely representative of the subject domain for some authors due to our decision to include only open access research. However, given that much of the research under consideration falls roughly within the time period that the US National Institutes of Health PubMed Central deposit mandate has been in effect, we do not believe that it has significantly affected our results, and include this statement to acknowledge that our selection was not strictly random. With these limitations in mind, we found that the number of NiMCS publications per year is increasing, and that there are conventional, upward trends for the number of authors per paper and for the rate at which new authors are added (the \u201creplacement rate\u201d). These are consistent with the establishment and subsequent formalization of biomedical subdisciplines. The content analysis reinforces the fact that NiMCS is, in large part, a clinical research endeavour. There is an unusually large amount of clinical and ethical discussion compared to other similar analyses of primary research in neuroscience (Garnett et al. 2011). Descriptions of the consciousness of patients are highly variable. Like the pool of stimuli that is small and unchanging, subject numbers are also low and steady per study. The highly 4 Until proposed solutions to this issue such as http://orcid.org/ enjoy wider uptake, we believe that it is methodologically cleaner not to attempt to resolve ambiguous author names manually. 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 16 17 18 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t focused co-authorship patterns suggest that NiMCS has not yet become widespread as a subdomain within clinical neuroscience. Despite the substantial author replacement rate, there appears to be only a small cohort of thought leaders and few new themes beyond clinical assessment that would fundamentally expand its landscape. Of the findings from our content analysis, many \u2013 such as the limited clinical and ethical discussion in primary research, and the number of subjects per study \u2013 were also largely confirmatory. This does not diminish their value, particularly when taken together with some of our author-level metrics. Notice that S. Laureys is the most central node in the co-authorship graph; he is also the leader of the Coma Science Group in the Department of Neurology at the Liege University Hospital in Belgium, and the cluster of co-authors surrounding him in the graph is comprised largely of his own graduate students. This is consistent with Abassi et al. (2011), who determined that working with many students is generally a more straightforward way to accumulate citations \u2013 academic capital \u2013 than working with other well-performing scholars. NiMCS research is also necessarily constrained in terms of actual capital, dependent on a teaching hospital to accommodate its teaching component. Thus, one should not necessarily expect a large cohort of thought leaders. This is particularly true when the existing thought leaders are distributed across international borders, which generally results in a diminished citation effect from collaboration(Abassi, 2013). However, there is no reason to believe that this is unique to NiMCS research. Interdisciplinarity in science is increasing 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t generally (Silva et al., 2013) and, in this and other disciplines where it is functionally difficult to contribute at the perceived top-end of the scientific dialogue, it is more productive \u2013 at least from a bibliometric perspective \u2013 to look at more diverse contributions as we have done. Will the science of consciousness realize its hope to change patient management after brain trauma as some have debated (Fins and Illes et al. 2008; Owen et al. 2006, 2008; Laureys et al. 2012)? Time will tell, and further analyses such as those conducted here will provide the lens for continued inquiry. But, even if the domain cannot deliver on its health care goal given potentially insurmountable complexities of consciousness, meaningfulness of communication, scarce resources and other variables, there is tremendous knowledge to be gained. We are learning deeply about the meaning of signals from the brain in health and in diseases of the central nervous system, about the boundaries and limits of this neuroscience research, and about the importance of balanced communication in the dissemination of information and neuroliteracy among the public. methods : 2 author characteristics : To determine the rate at which NiMCS gains new researchers, we calculated the number of unique authors publishing each year who had never previously published within the discipline, as well as the number of unique authors publishing each year who had not published within the discipline in the prior three years. To determine the originating specialty of NiMCS authors, we created a script that utilizes PubMed's Entrez API to aggregate the MeSH terms applied to the authors' entire respective body of work as represented in PubMed (Cheung, 2012). We then calculated the variance in the application of MeSH terms to each of these authors' respective bodies of work. We contrasted the variance in the application of MeSH terms with the total number of MeSH terms, and total number of unique MeSH terms applied to each data set to yield a measure of domain breadth versus total publishing output for all authors contributing to the NiMCS literature. Then, to provide individual examples of contributing authors from various domains, we randomly selected 10% of these authors for manual analysis of subject specialities as expressed by MeSH. 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t Despite being a narrowly defined subfield within clinical neuroscience, NiMCS authors come from a very diverse set of background subject areas according to PubMed's MeSH vocabulary. Few MeSH terms, among them \u201cself-help devices\u201d and \u201cdecision-making,\u201d are common to multiple authors. Other contributing specialties include \u201cQuadriplegia, Nerve Growth, Alzheimer Disease\u201d (MA Bruno), \u201cSleep, Pain\u201d (M Boly), \u201cNeurophils, Anesthesia\u201d (M Lamy), \u201cCommunication Aids, Behavioral Therapy\u201d (MF O'Reilly), and \u201cSleep, Memory\u201d (M Schabus). The variance in assignment of MeSH terms to each author's work is provided in Table 2, and the raw data containing term counts for each author is available upon request. 3 author interconnections : We used the ISI Web of Science database and the CiteSpace and Gephi graph visualization packages to provide a measure of the interconnections of authors of publications retrieved in the full database. We translated our PubMed query to the ISI equivalent terms (\u201c\"minimally conscious\" and neuro*\u201d), retrieved matching articles2, and exported the results to CiteSpace to generate a meaningful and interpretable graph. An automatic pruning step was performed in CiteSpace to prioritize strongly connected nodes3. The data were then exported to the GraphML format used by the Gephi graphing software for visualization. Except where otherwise noted, the ForceAtlas2 graph layout algorithm was used (to improve readability by emphasizing nodes' relationship with their \u201cneighbours\u201d), with color-coded clustering performed using Louvain Modularity (designed to find communities within ad-hoc networks; Blondel et al., 2008) and node weighting by eigenvector centrality. Two separate graphs were generated: 1) A map of author collaborations in which the nodes are individual 2 We verified that the ISI query result set was not more than 20% different from the PubMed query result, determined to be an acceptable margin of error for cross-database comparison. 3 This pruning step was performed specifically to compress the graph into a viable 1000px horizontal image, which can be easily scanned by the human eye. Data were pruned using a percentage cutoff (15%) for the most-cited articles within the dataset for a given year, rather than pruning the entire dataset, in order to surface \"smaller\" contributions on a year-by-year basis and provide a counter to the Matthew Effect (Merton, 1968) and then compiled. This ceiling was adjusted multiple times after consultation with domain experts in order to ensure that it adequately represented the social structure of the domain. The unpruned data are available as a raw node-and-edge graph file upon request for readers who wish to have a 100% complete representation of co-authorship or co-citation in NiMCS. 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t researchers and the edges represent co-authorship. 2) A map of article usage over time in which the nodes are published works and the edges represent citation. The top 10% of articles by node centrality from this graph were reviewed for content, and the graph was manually annotated with subtopic descriptions corresponding to groups of articles. Graphs were then interpreted qualitatively using visual information from the modularity and centrality weightings. Co-authorship graph computations illustrate that the most prominent author (eigenvector centrality = 1) largely publishes with members of his own research team. Similar separate author clusters are formed for two other prominent authors with eigenvector centrality = 0.032 and 0.042 and their within group co-authors. These and other high-degree nodes bridging multiple clusters are labelled on Figure 2. 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t The co-citation graph reveals dependencies between disciplines in NiMCS (Figure 3). The lower portion of Figure 3 shows a long tail of straightforwardly empirical research into unconscious stimuli and some generalized studies of brain function using positron emission tomography (PET). These both inform bioethical and philosophical work on the neuroscience of consciousness. This bioethics literature is most closely related to clinical neuroscience in that it focuses specifically on differentiating PVS and MCS, and on issues around communication with patients by measuring functional brain activity. The most frequently cited papers (corresponding to increasing node size) in this domain were primarily published between 2000 and 2005, consistent with the levelling off of the publication growth rate. corresponding author: : Judy Illes, PhD, FRSC, FCAHS Professor of Neurology Director, National Core for Neuroethics The University of British Columbia Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine 2211 Wesbrook Mall, Koerner S124 Vancouver, BC V6T 2B5 CANADA Tel: 604.822.0746 http://www.neuroethicscanada.ca 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t 1 publication patterns : To calculate basic publication trends in NiMCS, we created the following PubMed query using the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) keyword vocabulary: \u201c[minimally conscious states] and ([neuroimaging] or [magnetic resonance imaging] or [functional neuroimaging])\u201d. This retrieved all indexed articles within PubMed matching the subject headings1, including primary research as well as reviews and editorials. We also documented the journals in which they were published (neuroscience, bioethics, general science). We determined the mean growth rate of NiMCS publications per year in the time period between 2002 and 2011; data from 2012 was not included as it was too recent to provide reliable metrics (Bornmann, 2013). Because our analysis covered a relatively short period, we also determined the change in growth rate each year, in order to determine whether this rate changed meaningfully within the timeframe. In addition to the base publication rate, we calculated the mean number of authors per publication in each year over the time period of interest. For comparison, we calculated the mean growth rate in all biomedical literature, defined for the purpose of this study as all 1 PubMed convention is such that formatting a search in this way will search both matching MeSH headings and matching free-text strings, in order to broaden coverage. 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 1 2 3 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t papers indexed in PubMed over the same time period. We retrieved 311 NiMCS papers for analysis, of which 141 (45%) were primary research articles. 81 (26%) represented case studies. Sixty-one (20%) were review articles, and the remaining 28 (9%) editorials and comments. The overall number of these NiMCS publications between 2002 and 2011 increased at an average rate of 27% per year (Figure 1). However, the growth rate was not linear across this time period, increasing by over 100% between 2002 and 2005, then falling to an average rate of 7% per year between 2005 and 2011. When shifting this comparison by one year, the growth rate between 2006 and 2011 was 11%. By comparison, the growth rate of all biomedical literature (defined for the purpose of this study as all papers indexed in PubMed) over the time period of 2005 to 2011 is approximately 7%. Using 2005 as the benchmark, the NiMCS growth since is essentially flat when normalized to the more broadly defined rate of scientific \u201cinflation.\u201d The average number of authors per NiMCS papers increased at an average rate of 33% per year from 1.3 in 2002 to 5.5 in 2011, linearly across the time period. The number of authors publishing in NiMCS who had never published in the domain before decreased from 92% in 2003 (when most researchers were \u201cnew\u201d) to 67% in 2011. Therefore, two-thirds of all authors currently publishing in NiMCS are likely first time authors. Meanwhile, the number of authors publishing in NiMCS who had not published in the domain 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t during the preceding three years held fairly consistent at 80\u00b13% since 2007 (Table 1). 4 clinical focus : We used the subset of Open Access articles from the total set retrieved for full-text analysis and coded the constituent papers for three factors: 1) Average number of brain injured subjects with a given diagnosis. We created a schema to organize the different descriptions used to classify patients (e.g., traumatic injury and non-traumatic injury, minimally conscious, and persistent vegetative state), 2) Nature and extent of discussion of clinical implications, including economic impact. Each new theme was counted once per paper. 3) Paradigms and stimuli used in the research protocols. Results 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t In the open access subset of 32 papers, different levels of granularity were used to describe levels of consciousness of patient-participants. Some publications dissociated MCS and PVS clearly, while others combined patients into a single \u201cnon-communicative\u201d group, and contrasted them only with healthy control subjects. We created the schema displayed in Figure 4 to manage the different descriptions for the purpose of this comparison. Articles reported approximately equal numbers of PVS and MCS subjects, with a majority of MCS subjects categorized as having a traumatic injury. The mean number of non-communicative subjects per study was 9, 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t while the mean number of healthy subjects was 18. Of the 32 publications analyzed qualitatively, 15 were primary research reports. Of the primary research articles, 8 (53%) featured some form of clinical discussion; 100% of publications not reporting primary research contained discussion of clinical issues. Clinical assessment was the dominant theme across all types of papers studied (N=13/32). We also noted specific discussions of recovery of consciousness (N=6/32), ethical decision-making in patient care (N=5/32), and clinical management by the bedside care (N=2/3). Three non-primary research articles discussed economic implications. For example: \u2026 [we] believe costs should not figure as a priority in an ethical discussion, and we do not believe that indefinite continuation of life-support is the only ethical option (Panksepp et al., 2007. Bioethics review article). Of the papers reporting stimuli used as part of a human subjects experiment, 8 described resting state activations; 7 described experiments involving sensorimotor and verbal stimuli, and spatial navigation. 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t publication trends in neuroimaging of minimally conscious states : We used existing and customized bibliometric and scientometric methods to analyze publication trends in neuroimaging research of minimally conscious states and describe the domain in terms of its geographic, contributor, and content features. We considered publication rates for the years 2002-2011, author interconnections, the rate at which new authors are added, and the domains that inform the work of author contributors. We also provided a content analysis of clinical and ethical themes within the relevant literature. We found a 27% growth in the number of papers over the period of study, professional diversity among a wide range of peripheral author contributors but only few authors who dominate the field, and few new technical paradigms and clinical themes that would fundamentally expand the landscape. The results inform both the science of consciousness as well as parallel ethics and policy studies of the potential for translational challenges of neuroimaging in research and health care of people with disordered states of consciousness. PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:1:0:NEW 2 Aug 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t Judy Illes1, Alex Garnett2, Grace Lee1 1 National Core for Neuroethics Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada 2 Simon Fraser University Library 5089 8888 University Drive Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6",
    "v3_text": "publication trends in neuroimaging of minimally conscious states : We used existing and customized bibliometric and scientometric methods to analyze publication trends in neuroimaging research of minimally conscious states and describe the domain in terms of its geographic, contributor, and content features. We considered publication rates for the years 2002-2011, author interconnections, the rate at which new authors are added, and the domains that inform the work of author contributors. We also provided a content analysis of clinical and ethical themes within the relevant literature. We found a 27% growth in the number of papers over the period of study, professional diversity among a wide range of peripheral author contributors but only few authors who dominate the field, and few new technical paradigms and clinical themes that would fundamentally expand the landscape. The results inform both the science of consciousness as well as parallel ethics and policy studies of the potential for translational challenges of neuroimaging in research and health care of people with disordered states of consciousness. PeerJ reviewing PDF | (v2013:06:598:0:1:NEW 19 Jun 2013) R ev ie w in g M an us cr ip t 1",
    "url": "https://peerj.com/articles/156/reviews/",
    "review_1": "Ziad Kronfol \u00b7 Aug 18, 2013 \u00b7 Academic Editor\nACCEPT\nThe authors have addressed all major concerns raised by the reviewers. The manuscript in its present format is acceptable for publication. It adds a new dimension to the literature on the affective profiles model.",
    "review_2": "Daniel Eisenberg \u00b7 Aug 18, 2013\nBasic reporting\nnone\nExperimental design\nNone\nValidity of the findings\nNone\nAdditional comments\nThe revisions are adequate and I have no further comments.\nCite this review as\nEisenberg D (2013) Peer Review #1 of \"The affective profiles in the USA: happiness, depression, life satisfaction, and happiness-increasing strategies (v0.2)\". PeerJ https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.156v0.2/reviews/1",
    "review_3": "Ziad Kronfol \u00b7 Aug 11, 2013 \u00b7 Academic Editor\nMAJOR REVISIONS\nTwo reviewers have submitted their comments. They both agree that the methodology is sound but that there is room for improvement in the reporting. Please use the reviewers' comments to make the manuscript more scholarly and easier to read. Please include in an accompanying letter the specific changes you have made and/or any rebuttal to the reviewers' concerns.",
    "review_4": "Daniel Eisenberg \u00b7 Aug 9, 2013\nBasic reporting\n(1) The unique contribution and significance of this paper are not sufficiently explained. If the U.S. population were of interest for specific reasons (other than a different setting for replication purposes), more should have been said about the U.S. population and its differences with previously examined populations (e.g., Dutch, Indonesians, Iranians). Hypotheses could have stated expected differences in outcomes based on certain characteristics of U.S. culture.\n\n(2) The introduction is not sufficiently organized, leaving the reader somewhat confused about the main objectives/interests of the present study. Overall, the introduction could be significantly shorter. There are nearly 6 pages of introductory material, and the relevance of some parts is not clear enough.\n\n(3) The authors present differences based on gender but do not fully explain how their findings fit into a broader literature. Furthermore, variations in mental health (including positive affect) are known to vary widely across the lifespan. For example, a recent study by Stone et al. (2010) found that for both men and women, levels of stress, anger, worry and sadness increase beginning at age 18 and takes on a u-shape, with steady decreases in well-being beginning in late adolescence. In the present study, the sample appears to have a wide age range, but the authors do not examine age.\n\n(4) Findings from Study 1 and 2 are seemingly contradictory for some outcomes, and it will help for the authors to reconcile or discuss these differences. For example, in Study 1, there were more self-destructive males than females while in Study 2 there were more self-destructive females than males.\n\n(5) My understanding is that there are significantly more limitations to using MTurk than the authors mention. I know that this is becoming an increasingly common practice in the social sciences, but the authors should say more about the potential limitations of their approach.\nExperimental design\nNo Comments\nValidity of the findings\nNo Comments\nAdditional comments\nThe comments above are all under the \"Basic Reporting\" category, because the methods seem reasonable but there could be improvement in how the study is framed and the findings are presented.\nCite this review as\nEisenberg D (2013) Peer Review #1 of \"The affective profiles in the USA: happiness, depression, life satisfaction, and happiness-increasing strategies (v0.1)\". PeerJ https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.156v0.1/reviews/1",
    "pdf_1": "https://peerj.com/articles/156v0.2/submission",
    "pdf_2": "https://peerj.com/articles/156v0.1/submission",
    "review_5": "Robert Johansson \u00b7 Jul 27, 2013\nBasic reporting\nThe authors report data from two studies that examine the connections between the four types of affective profiles (self-fulfilling, high affective, low affective, self-destructive) to happiness and depression (Study I), satisfaction with life and happiness-increasing strategies (Study II) among US residents. Results showed that the self-fulfilling group reported a significantly higher level of happiness and a significantly lower level of depression than all the three other groups (high affective, low affective, self-destructive).\n\nInnovative use of the MTurk to recruit US participants!\n\nThe authors are explicit with their aim about generalizing previous results from the Swedish general population. Reporting is clear and presented in a logical structure.\n\nGreat illustration of the results in Figure 1. It could be more clear in the description of the Figure that it illustrates the results from the present study.\nExperimental design\nThe design is valid and seem appropriate to the research question.\nValidity of the findings\nThe authors have included various secondary measures in the two studies. Research that support the validity of the included measure need to be reported. Best would be previously published data that support this, and not just for the present sample. For example, the authors have used the \"Short Depression-Happiness Scale\" which is a measure that the reviewer have not heard of. The authors need to argue for including such measure and not an established measure (e.g. the PHQ-9). Probably, the authors will need to include this as a limitation.\nAdditional comments\nSome minor comments:\n\n* The last sentence in the Conclusion (\"Showing that agentic\u2026\") would benefit from rewriting.\n\n* The \"Cloninger, C. R., & Zohar, A. H.\" reference is misplaced in the reference list\nCite this review as\nJohansson R (2013) Peer Review #2 of \"The affective profiles in the USA: happiness, depression, life satisfaction, and happiness-increasing strategies (v0.1)\". PeerJ https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.156v0.1/reviews/2",
    "all_reviews": "Review 1: Ziad Kronfol \u00b7 Aug 18, 2013 \u00b7 Academic Editor\nACCEPT\nThe authors have addressed all major concerns raised by the reviewers. The manuscript in its present format is acceptable for publication. It adds a new dimension to the literature on the affective profiles model.\nReview 2: Daniel Eisenberg \u00b7 Aug 18, 2013\nBasic reporting\nnone\nExperimental design\nNone\nValidity of the findings\nNone\nAdditional comments\nThe revisions are adequate and I have no further comments.\nCite this review as\nEisenberg D (2013) Peer Review #1 of \"The affective profiles in the USA: happiness, depression, life satisfaction, and happiness-increasing strategies (v0.2)\". PeerJ https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.156v0.2/reviews/1\nReview 3: Ziad Kronfol \u00b7 Aug 11, 2013 \u00b7 Academic Editor\nMAJOR REVISIONS\nTwo reviewers have submitted their comments. They both agree that the methodology is sound but that there is room for improvement in the reporting. Please use the reviewers' comments to make the manuscript more scholarly and easier to read. Please include in an accompanying letter the specific changes you have made and/or any rebuttal to the reviewers' concerns.\nReview 4: Daniel Eisenberg \u00b7 Aug 9, 2013\nBasic reporting\n(1) The unique contribution and significance of this paper are not sufficiently explained. If the U.S. population were of interest for specific reasons (other than a different setting for replication purposes), more should have been said about the U.S. population and its differences with previously examined populations (e.g., Dutch, Indonesians, Iranians). Hypotheses could have stated expected differences in outcomes based on certain characteristics of U.S. culture.\n\n(2) The introduction is not sufficiently organized, leaving the reader somewhat confused about the main objectives/interests of the present study. Overall, the introduction could be significantly shorter. There are nearly 6 pages of introductory material, and the relevance of some parts is not clear enough.\n\n(3) The authors present differences based on gender but do not fully explain how their findings fit into a broader literature. Furthermore, variations in mental health (including positive affect) are known to vary widely across the lifespan. For example, a recent study by Stone et al. (2010) found that for both men and women, levels of stress, anger, worry and sadness increase beginning at age 18 and takes on a u-shape, with steady decreases in well-being beginning in late adolescence. In the present study, the sample appears to have a wide age range, but the authors do not examine age.\n\n(4) Findings from Study 1 and 2 are seemingly contradictory for some outcomes, and it will help for the authors to reconcile or discuss these differences. For example, in Study 1, there were more self-destructive males than females while in Study 2 there were more self-destructive females than males.\n\n(5) My understanding is that there are significantly more limitations to using MTurk than the authors mention. I know that this is becoming an increasingly common practice in the social sciences, but the authors should say more about the potential limitations of their approach.\nExperimental design\nNo Comments\nValidity of the findings\nNo Comments\nAdditional comments\nThe comments above are all under the \"Basic Reporting\" category, because the methods seem reasonable but there could be improvement in how the study is framed and the findings are presented.\nCite this review as\nEisenberg D (2013) Peer Review #1 of \"The affective profiles in the USA: happiness, depression, life satisfaction, and happiness-increasing strategies (v0.1)\". PeerJ https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.156v0.1/reviews/1\nReview 5: Robert Johansson \u00b7 Jul 27, 2013\nBasic reporting\nThe authors report data from two studies that examine the connections between the four types of affective profiles (self-fulfilling, high affective, low affective, self-destructive) to happiness and depression (Study I), satisfaction with life and happiness-increasing strategies (Study II) among US residents. Results showed that the self-fulfilling group reported a significantly higher level of happiness and a significantly lower level of depression than all the three other groups (high affective, low affective, self-destructive).\n\nInnovative use of the MTurk to recruit US participants!\n\nThe authors are explicit with their aim about generalizing previous results from the Swedish general population. Reporting is clear and presented in a logical structure.\n\nGreat illustration of the results in Figure 1. It could be more clear in the description of the Figure that it illustrates the results from the present study.\nExperimental design\nThe design is valid and seem appropriate to the research question.\nValidity of the findings\nThe authors have included various secondary measures in the two studies. Research that support the validity of the included measure need to be reported. Best would be previously published data that support this, and not just for the present sample. For example, the authors have used the \"Short Depression-Happiness Scale\" which is a measure that the reviewer have not heard of. The authors need to argue for including such measure and not an established measure (e.g. the PHQ-9). Probably, the authors will need to include this as a limitation.\nAdditional comments\nSome minor comments:\n\n* The last sentence in the Conclusion (\"Showing that agentic\u2026\") would benefit from rewriting.\n\n* The \"Cloninger, C. R., & Zohar, A. H.\" reference is misplaced in the reference list\nCite this review as\nJohansson R (2013) Peer Review #2 of \"The affective profiles in the USA: happiness, depression, life satisfaction, and happiness-increasing strategies (v0.1)\". PeerJ https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.156v0.1/reviews/2\nReview 6: \n",
    "LLM_extracted_review": "['Review 1: The authors have addressed all major concerns raised by the reviewers. The manuscript in its present format is acceptable for publication. It adds a new dimension to the literature on the affective profiles model.\\n\\nReview 2: The revisions are adequate and I have no further comments.\\n\\nReview 3: Two reviewers have submitted their comments. They both agree that the methodology is sound but that there is room for improvement in the reporting.\\n\\nReview 4: \\n1. The unique contribution and significance of this paper are not sufficiently explained. \\n2. The introduction is not sufficiently organized, leaving the reader somewhat confused about the main objectives/interests of the present study. \\n3. The authors present differences based on gender but do not fully explain how their findings fit into a broader literature. \\n4. Findings from Study 1 and 2 are seemingly contradictory for some outcomes, and it will help for the authors to reconcile or discuss these differences. \\n5. There are significantly more limitations to using MTurk than the authors mention.\\n\\nReview 5: \\n1. Results showed that the self-fulfilling group reported a significantly higher level of happiness and a significantly lower level of depression than all the three other groups.\\n2. Innovative use of the MTurk to recruit US participants.\\n3. Reporting is clear and presented in a logical structure.\\n4. Research that supports the validity of the included measure needs to be reported.\\n5. The last sentence in the Conclusion would benefit from rewriting.\\n6. The reference is misplaced in the reference list.']"
}