SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Med.
Sec. Intensive Care Medicine and Anesthesiology
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1633371
A cross-sectional bibliometric analysis of care phases in SCImago's top five intensive care journals in 2012 and 2022
Provisionally accepted
Mark ZY Tan1*
Pei Shan Lim2Saarth Shiralkar3Bruce Liu2Laura Scott2Matthew Palethorpe2
Paul Dark1
Jan Hansel1*- 1The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
- 2health education england northwest, Manchester, United Kingdom
- 3Manchester Royal Infirmary, Manchester, United Kingdom
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Background: The critically ill patient's journey can broadly be divided into three phases; events prior to admission, during the ICU stay, and following discharge. There is a paucity of evidence on what proportion of research outputs in high-impact intensive care journals address the respective phases. We aimed to investigate how intensive care research published in SCImago's top five journals mapped onto phases of care and the National Institute of Health and Care Research James Lind Alliance (NIHR JLA) Priority Setting Partnership research topics over a decade. The study was prospectively registered with the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/r8vs5/). Methods: We conducted a bibliometric cross-sectional analysis of intensive care research published in 2012 and 2022, in the top five intensive care journals according to the SCImago ranking system. We categorised studies according to phases of care: 'pre-ICU', 'in ICU', 'post-ICU', or 'multiple phases'; and according to the previously published NIHR JLA research topics. We adhered to relevant PRISMA and BIBLIO reporting guidelines in conducting the review. Results: In 2012 and 2022, respectively, 755 (73%) and 602 (73.7%) studies were focused on the 'in ICU' phase, 148 (14.3%) and 87 (10.6%) studies on the 'pre-ICU' phase, and 39 (3.8%) and 56 (6.9%) studies on the 'post-ICU' phase. In both years, two NIHR JLA research topics were most represented: 'respiratory/ventilation' (19.1% and 26.6% in 2012 and 2022, respectively) and 'infection/sepsis' (15.6% and 13.7% in 2012 and 2022, respectively). Conclusion: Among the top five intensive care journals according to the SCImago ranking system, research tends to be centred on the period during patients' ICU stay, and characterised most by the topics of 'respiratory/ventilation' and 'infection/sepsis'.
Keywords: Critical Illness, Intensive Care, Emergency care, bibliometric analysis, NIHR JamesLind Alliance
Received: 22 May 2025; Accepted: 25 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Tan, Lim, Shiralkar, Liu, Scott, Palethorpe, Dark and Hansel. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Mark ZY Tan, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
Jan Hansel, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
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