Document types and trends of publication
The initial search identified a total of 6,049 documents from all countries and after refining the search to China and Taiwan, they reduced to 230 (3.8%). For comparison, USA had 2,513 (41.5%) CHO documents, followed by UK 615 (15%) and Australia 373 (6.2%).
The 230 documents were considered for analysis, of which only one article was in the Chinese language, and the rest in the English language. Of the total papers, 16 were Single-authored documents, while 172 (74.8%) were research articles, 23 (10%) reviews, and 21 (9.1%) meeting abstracts, 8 (3.5%) editorial material and the rest were of other document types (Fig. 1).
Globally, CHO research begun in 1996 from which it had gradually increased over the last two decades. (Fig. 2 (a)). CHO documents in China were produced within a period of 20 years (2001-2020). In the first six years (2001-2006), the output as little with less than 5 documents per year. However, the publications gradually increased in 2010, attaining a maximum peak of 32 publications in 2015, after which they gradually reduced over the recent years. The analysis showed that 88.3% of the publications were published in the last ten years (2010-2020). The mean citation per year also followed an almost similar trend, where it attained a peak of 8.3 citations per year. The average citation per document of the analysed documents was 18.4 (Fig. 2 (b))
Most productive institutions and their collaborations.
The studies were produced by 373 institutions, of which 15 produced eight and more articles. The most influential institutions were Peking University (n=22), Chinese Centre of Disease Control & Prevention (19), Chinese University of Hong Kong (18), Fudan University (15), among others. (Fig. 3).
Most influential Funding agencies and Research fields
A total of 23 institutions were identified as funding agencies of CHO research in China, of which over 10 financed atleast 5 study. These included the National Natural Science Foundation of China (48), National Institutes of Health NIH USA (39), and the United States Department of Health Human Services (39), among others. Coca Cola Company was also noted to finance six CHO studies (Table 1).
The analysed articles belonged to 48 research fields categorised according to the WoS fields, and of these, ten fields had atleast 7 articles. The most crucial research field included “Endocrinology Metabolism” (50), “Public Environmental Occupational Health” (46), “Pediatrics” (44), and “Nutrition Dietetics” (33) among others, as shown in table 1.
Table 1 The 10 top funding agencies of CHO research and the most crucial research fields in CHO
Funding Agencies
|
Research Fields
|
Rank
|
Agency
|
Number of papers (%)
|
Research area
|
Number of papers (%)
|
1
|
National Natural Science Foundation of China
|
48 (20.9)
|
Endocrinology Metabolism
Public
|
50 (21.7)
|
2
|
National Institutes of Health NIH-USA
|
39 (17.0)
|
Environmental Occupational Health
|
46 (20.0)
|
3
|
United States Department of Health Human Services
|
39 (17.0)
|
Pediatrics
|
44 (19.1)
|
4
|
NIH Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health Human Development
|
16 (7.0)
|
Nutrition Dietetics
|
33 (14.3)
|
5
|
NIH National Institute of Diabetes Digestive Kidney Diseases NIDDK
|
9 (3.9)
|
Environmental Sciences Ecology
|
17 (7.4)
|
6
|
National Basic Research Program of China
|
7 (3.0)
|
Science Technology Other Topics
|
15 (6.5)
|
7
|
Coca Cola Company
|
6 (2.6)
|
General Internal Medicine
|
13 (5.7)
|
8
|
Ministry of Science and Technology China
|
6 (2.6)
|
Research Experimental Medicine
|
8 (3.5)
|
9
|
National Key Technology R D Program
|
6 (2.6)
|
Biochemistry Molecular Biology
|
7 (3.0)
|
10
|
Fundamental Research Funds For The Central Universities
|
5 (2.2)
|
Psychology
|
7 (3.0)
|
Most contributing authors and their collaborations
The analysed publications were produced by a total of 1010 authors, of which 13 were authors of single-authored documents. Twelve authors produced atleast 8 CHO documents and included; Wang YF (17), Xue H (11), Ma GS (10) among others. (Table 2)
Table 2 Authors with eight and more CHO publications
Rank
|
Author
|
Number of papers (%)
|
1st Author
|
2nd Author
|
3rd or Last author
|
Total citations
|
1
|
Wang YF
|
17 (7.4)
|
2
|
2
|
13
|
176
|
2
|
Xue H
|
11 (4.8)
|
0
|
4
|
7
|
131
|
3
|
Ma GS
|
10 (4.4)
|
2
|
1
|
7
|
232
|
4
|
Wang HJ
|
10 (4.4)
|
0
|
1
|
9
|
116
|
5
|
Wang Y
|
10 (4.4)
|
2
|
0
|
8
|
260
|
6
|
Zhang J
|
10 (4.4)
|
1
|
0
|
9
|
151
|
7
|
Hu G
|
9 (3.9)
|
0
|
0
|
9
|
376
|
8
|
Jia P
|
9 (3.9)
|
4
|
0
|
5
|
55
|
9
|
Li Y
|
9 (3.9)
|
3
|
0
|
6
|
187
|
10
|
Ma J
|
9 (3.9)
|
0
|
1
|
8
|
126
|
11
|
Hu XQ
|
8 (3.5)
|
0
|
3
|
5
|
184
|
12
|
Zhang Y
|
8 (3.5)
|
1
|
2
|
5
|
88
|
Most productive Journals.
The retrieved CHO articles were published in 121 journals, of which 10 of them published 5 or more papers. It was noted that foreign journals dominated the list, especially UK journals. The most ten productive journals included; “Obesity Reviews” (15), “Biomedical and Environmental Sciences” (11), “BMC Public Health” (8), among others. The impact factor of the 10 top productive journals ranged from 1.17 to 7.34 (Table 3).
Table 3 Journals that published five or more CHO articles
Rank
|
Journal
|
Country location
|
Number of papers (%)
|
Impact Factor (2018)
|
Total citations
|
1
|
Obesity Reviews
|
United Kingdom
|
15 (6.5)
|
8.19
|
531
|
2
|
Biomedical and Environmental Sciences
|
China
|
11(4.8)
|
1.92
|
471
|
3
|
BMC Public Health
|
United Kingdom
|
8(3.5)
|
2.57
|
427
|
4
|
International Journal of Obesity
|
United Kingdom
|
7(3.1)
|
4.51
|
90
|
5
|
PLoS One
|
United States
|
7(3.1)
|
2.78
|
126
|
6
|
Childhood Obesity
|
United States
|
6(2.6)
|
2.43
|
59
|
7
|
Pediatric Obesity
|
United Kingdom
|
6(2.6)
|
3.71
|
52
|
8
|
Scientific Reports
|
United Kingdom
|
6(2.6)
|
4.01
|
81
|
9
|
International Journal of Epidemiology
|
United Kingdom
|
5(2.2)
|
7.34
|
146
|
10
|
World Journal of Pediatrics
|
Germany
|
5(2.2)
|
1.17
|
36
|
Collaborations and Network analysis
The analysis showed that China collaborated with 28 countries within CHO research. The strongest partnership was with the USA, with which it produced 90 studies, followed by Australia (20), UK (28), among others. China also collaborated with some African countries, including South Africa and Kenya, producing 6 studies with each. (Fig. 4 (a))
Analysis of institutional collaboration revealed that the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (Chinese CDC) was the most collaborative institution with 14 links (L) and 27 link strength (LS). This was followed by Peking University (L=12, LS=15) and Fudan University (L=9, LS=24) among others. A minimum of 5 documents per institution was set, and 39 institutions met the threshold visualised in fig. 4(b).
The analysed papers were produced in collaboration among various authors, with a Collaboration index of 4.66. The most collaborative authors of CHO research included; Hu G (L=19, LS=101), Katzmarkzyk PT (L=18, LS=96), Standage M (L=18, LS=96), amongst others. A minimum of 4 documents per author was set, and 32 met the threshold visualised in fig. 4(c).
Most cited documents on CHO
Among the analysed publications, seven articles were cited more than 100 times and the most cited document was a review written by Olds T et al. It was published in the “International Journal of Pediatric Obesity” in 2011, under the title “Evidence that the Prevalence of Childhood Overweight is Plateauing: Data from nine Countries”, with 355 total citations (TC), and 131.2 total citations per year (TC/year). This was followed by other documents which included an editorial material written by Ji CY et al. in 2008 (Table 4). The 10 top-cited papers altogether were cited 1,595 times in the last 20 years.
Table 4 The 10 most-cited articles of CHO from China
Analysis of keywords
Keyword distribution was analysed to detect directions and topics in CHO research and to understand discipline development. The retrieved documents had 388 author’s keywords and 612 keywords plus. The most common keywords plus in the retrieved documents included; children (99), overweight (88), body mass index (83), adolescents (53), amongst others, as visualised in fig. 5 (a) and (b). The size and centrality of the word reflect its frequency and magnitude. Note that keywords plus are words that frequently appear in the titles of an article's references, but do not appear in the title of the article itself, and are vital in exploring the knowledge structure of scientific fields.