THE IMPACT OF CANADIAN-PRODUCED RESEARCH ON GLOBAL ORTHOPAEDIC LITERATURE: A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS

Little is known about the quality and impact of Canadian-produced research relative to other developed nations. The purpose of this study was to determine 1) the global and national contribution of Canadian authors in the orthopedic literature, 2) the orthopedic productivity in Canada. We hypothesized that Canada ranks among the most impactful countries in terms of orthopedic research productivity. We performed a bibliometric analysis to identify articles published between 2001 and 2020 under the heading “orthopedics”. We identified: 1) Canada's global rank in terms of overall productivity, 2) individual Canadian authors' contribution, 3) quality of publications based on Category Normalized Citation Impact (CNCI) and publication in the top quartile of journals in terms of impact factor (%Q1), 4) percentage of Canadian publications attributable to orthopedics. We identified 10821 orthopedic publications from 2001 to 2020, of which Canada accounts for 7 th most globally. The annual productivity of Canadian orthopedic researchers had risen by a factor of 3.2. In terms of research quality, with a %Q1 of 36.5% and a CNCI of 1.22, Canada surpassed the USA, England, Germany, China, and Japan. Furthermore, orthopedic publications have accounted for 2.26% of overall Canadian scientific publications. The body of Canadian orthopedic literature has grown consistently over the past 20 years, and despite the overall leadership of the United States and other developed nations such as China and Japan, Canada ranks among the most influential countries in terms of quality and quantity of orthopedic research.