Interdisciplinary influences in headache literature: A network citation analysis of PubMed Central articles.

BACKGROUND: Non-headache literature inevitably influences headache research, but the way this interdisciplinary interaction occurs has seldom been evaluated. OBJECTIVE: Utilizing network analysis techniques within the PubMed Central (PMC) database, we illustrate a novel method by which to identify and characterize the important non-headache literature with significant impact within the headache world. METHODS: Using the National Center for Biotechnology Information E-utilities application programing interface and custom backend software, all PMC articles containing the words "headache(s)" and/or "migraine(s)" in the title were identified. This generated a list of "seed articles" to represent the body of primary headache literature. Articles referenced by the seeds were then found, generating the list of articles with one degree of separation from the seeds (first-degree neighbors). This was iterated twice more to find the second- and third-degree neighbors. A directed network graph was generated for each level of separation using these articles and their referential connections. The hyperlink-induced topic search (HITS) and PageRank algorithms were used on these graphs to find the top 50 articles in the network (hub and authority rank via HITS, general rank via PageRank). Removing seed articles from the ranked lists left the influential non-headache articles at each level of separation. RESULTS: We extracted 6890 seed articles. The first-, second-, and third-degree models contained 16,451, 105,496, and 431,748 articles, respectively. As expected, most first-degree neighbors were part of the seed group (headache literature). Using HITS, at the second degree, only two seed articles were found in the top 50 hubs (none in the authorities); the majority of non-seed articles were basic neuroscience, involving ion channel function or cell signaling. At the third degree, there were no seeds and all articles involved imaging/structure of brain connectivity networks. PageRank gave more varied results, with 35/50 second-degree articles being seeds, and the remainder a mixture of articles describing rating scales (3), epidemiology/disease burden (3), basic statistical/trial methods (3), and mixed basic science (6). At the third degree, five were seeds; non-seed articles were represented heavily by genomic mapping studies, brain connectivity networks, and ion channel/neurotransmitter studies. CONCLUSION: This work demonstrates the value of network citation analysis in the identification of interdisciplinary influences on headache medicine. Articles found with this technique via HITS identified and grouped basic science applicable to headache medicine at the molecular scale (ion channels/transmitters), and whole-brain scale (connectivity networks). Both groups have direct clinical correlates, with the former implicating pharmacological targets, and the latter implicating functional neuroanatomy and pathophysiology of various headache disorders. Likely, in-depth analysis of the whole network (rather than the top 50) would reveal further clusters where the relationship to headache may not be as immediately obvious. This may not only help to guide ongoing work, but also identify new targets where seemingly unrelated work may have future applications in headache management.

Methodology of Interdisciplinary Studies in Nursing Based on Islamic Documents.

To meet the needs of people from various cultures, nursing research must be performed on the basis of these cultures. This research aims to invent interdisciplinary research method based on Islamic documents. This method is with three stages: first, to describe a desired concept; second, to define the concept from the viewpoint of humans. Finally, a nursing discipline is achieved on the basis of the human knowledge and its findings, and Islamic documents. Results of this research method assist nurses in offering nursing care with regard to Muslim's beliefs in addition to their culture and customs.

Anticoagulation for Patients With Atrial Fibrillation and End-Stage Renal Disease on Dialysis: A National Survey.

Patients with atrial fibrillation (AF) have a significant increased risk of embolic stroke. Patients with end-stage renal disease who are on dialysis have an increased risk of both embolic stroke and bleeding. Stroke-prevention studies with the use of anticoagulation for AF patients have excluded patients on dialysis, so there remains no consensus on their management. We developed and implemented a pan-Canadian multidisciplinary survey to explore the current beliefs and practices concerning patients with AF on dialysis. We developed an online investigator-designed survey with both quantitative and qualitative responses with the use of a secure university-affiliated electronic service. The survey was distributed to physicians via the QxMD platform and directly to internal medicine, cardiology, and nephrology residency program directors for distribution to faculty members. 130 participants responded, including 46 cardiologists, 45 nephrologists, 30 general internists, and 9 other physicians. The preferred anticoagulant was warfarin. The CHADS2 score used to initiate anticoagulation was highly variable, with specialties differing in use of a CHADS2 threshold of ≥ 1 (P < 0.001) and the impact of previous transient ischemic attack/stroke (P = 0.02). Calciphylaxis history affected the decision to prescribe anticoagulation. Specialties differed in thresholds used to consider direct oral anticoagulants for dialysis patients, with nephrologists more likely to prescribe anticoagulation at higher CHADS2 scores. Our survey demonstrated significant heterogeneity of anticoagulation use for stroke prevention in patients with AF on dialysis. Physician specialty and patient risk profiles contributed to the observed variability. This study reemphasises the need for clinical trials, large observational studies, and consensus guidelines to address evident equipoise.

Interdisciplinary Research Maps: A new technique for visualizing research topics.

This article introduces Interdisciplinary Research Maps as a novel visualization technique to assist with interdisciplinary research analytics and to map common (and distinct) topics across publications from different disciplines. We detail the method for this technique which is based on entity linking and illustrate its application to a sample of articles sourced from the top business/management and environmental sciences journals. Both fields have separately been criticized for a lack of interdisciplinary research to co-create insights for tackling pressing environmental issues such as climate change. Our mapping approach provides a starting point for exploring similarities and differences in research topics across these fields. The mapping technique introduced here has broader applicability to facilitate the creation and exchange of knowledge across fields. We discuss avenues for visualization techniques to bridge the different fields by focusing on identifying common concepts to provide a basis for future analysis.

The 2019 Bo Lindell Laureate Lecture: On the use of interdisciplinary, stakeholder-driven, radiation protection research in support of medical uses of ionising radiation.

Medical exposures form the largest manmade contributor to total ionising radiation exposure of the UK population. In recent years, new technologies have been developed to improve treatment and prognosis of individuals treated with radiation for diseases such as cancer. However, there is evidence of public, patient, and medical professional concern that radiation protection regulations and practices, as well as understanding of potential long-term adverse health effects of radiation exposure (in the context of other health risks), have not always 'kept pace' with technological developments in this field. This is a truly complex, multi-disciplinary problem for the modern world.The 'Radiation Theme' of the Public Health England and Newcastle University Health Protection Research Unit on 'Chemical and Radiation Threats and Hazards' is addressing this need, with a key focus on a genuinely interdisciplinary approach bringing together world-leading epidemiologists, radiation biologists, clinicians, statisticians, and artists. In addition, the project has a strong grounding in public, patient, and medical professional involvement in research. Similarly, the EU-CONCERT-funded LDLensRad project seeks to understand the mechanisms of action of low-dose ionising radiation in the lens of the eye, and the potential contribution to the development of cataract - in contemporary research, such projects will only be considered successful when they make use of expertise from a variety of fields and when they are able to demonstrate that the outputs are not only of benefit to society, but that society understands and welcomes the benefits. Finally, successful engagement, training, and retention of early career scientists within this field is crucial for sustainability of the research. Herein, the contribution of embedded interdisciplinary working, stakeholder involvement, and training of early career scientists to recent advancements in the field of medical (and wider) radiation protection research is discussed and considered.

Interdisciplinarity in medical education research: myth and reality.

The medical education (Med Ed) research community characterises itself as drawing on the insights, methods, and knowledge from multiple disciplines and research domains (e.g. Sociology, Anthropology, Education, Humanities, Psychology). This common view of Med Ed research is echoed and reinforced by the narrative used by leading Med Ed departments and research centres to describe their activities as "interdisciplinary." Bibliometrics offers an effective method of investigating scholarly communication to determine what knowledge is valued, recognized, and utilized. By empirically examining whether knowledge production in Med Ed research draws from multiple disciplines and research areas, or whether it primarily draws on the knowledge generated internally within the field of Med Ed, this article explores whether the characterisation of Med Ed research as interdisciplinary is substantiated. A citation analysis of 1412 references from research articles published in 2017 in the top five Med Ed journals was undertaken. A typology of six knowledge clusters was inductively developed. Findings show that the field of Med Ed research draws predominantly from two knowledge clusters: the Applied Health Research cluster (made of clinical and health services research), which represents 41% of the references, and the Med Ed research cluster, which represents 40% of the references. These two clusters cover 81% of all references in our sample, leaving 19% distributed among the other knowledge clusters (i.e., Education, disciplinary, interdisciplinary and topic centered research). The quasi-hegemonic position held by the Applied Health and Med Ed research clusters confines the other sources of knowledge to a peripheral role within the Med Ed research field. Our findings suggest that the assumption that Med Ed research is an interdisciplinary field is not convincingly supported by empirical data and that the knowledge entering Med Ed comes mostly from the health research domain.

Benefits of basic research from the Superfund Research Program.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Hazardous Substances Basic Research and Training Program [Superfund Research Program (SRP)] funds transdisciplinary research projects spanning the biomedical and environmental sciences to address issues related to potentially hazardous substances. We used a case study approach to identify how SRP-funded basic biomedical research has had an impact on society. We examined how transdisciplinary research projects from the SRP have advanced knowledge and led to additional clinical, public health, policy, and economic benefits. SRP basic biomedical research findings have contributed to the body of knowledge and influenced a broad range of scientific disciplines. It has informed the development of policies and interventions to reduce exposure to environmental contaminants to improve public health. Research investments by the SRP have had a significant impact on science, health, and society. Documenting the benefits of these investments provides insight into how basic research is translated to real-world applications.

Artificial Intelligence and Primary Care Research: A Scoping Review.

PURPOSE: Rapid increases in technology and data motivate the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to primary care, but no comprehensive review exists to guide these efforts. Our objective was to assess the nature and extent of the body of research on AI for primary care. METHODS: We performed a scoping review, searching 11 published or gray literature databases with terms pertaining to AI (eg, machine learning, bayes* network) and primary care (eg, general pract*, nurse). We performed title and abstract and then full-text screening using Covidence. Studies had to involve research, include both AI and primary care, and be published in Eng-lish. We extracted data and summarized studies by 7 attributes: purpose(s); author appointment(s); primary care function(s); intended end user(s); health condition(s); geographic location of data source; and AI subfield(s). RESULTS: Of 5,515 unique documents, 405 met eligibility criteria. The body of research focused on developing or modifying AI methods (66.7%) to support physician diagnostic or treatment recommendations (36.5% and 13.8%), for chronic conditions, using data from higher-income countries. Few studies (14.1%) had even a single author with a primary care appointment. The predominant AI subfields were supervised machine learning (40.0%) and expert systems (22.2%). CONCLUSIONS: Research on AI for primary care is at an early stage of maturity. For the field to progress, more interdisciplinary research teams with end-user engagement and evaluation studies are needed.

Sharing SRP data to reduce environmentally associated disease and promote transdisciplinary research.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Superfund Basic Research and Training Program (SRP) funds a wide range of projects that span biomedical, environmental sciences, and engineering research and generate a wealth of data resulting from hypothesis-driven research projects. Combining or integrating these diverse data offers an opportunity to uncover new scientific connections that can be used to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the interplay between exposures and health. Integrating and reusing data generated from individual research projects within the program requires harmonization of data workflows, ensuring consistent and robust practices in data stewardship, and embracing data sharing from the onset of data collection and analysis. We describe opportunities to leverage data within the SRP and current SRP efforts to advance data sharing and reuse, including by developing an SRP dataset library and fostering data integration through Data Management and Analysis Cores. We also discuss opportunities to improve public health by identifying parallels in the data captured from health and engineering research, layering data streams for a more comprehensive picture of exposures and disease, and using existing SRP research infrastructure to facilitate and foster data sharing. Importantly, we point out that while the SRP is in a unique position to exploit these opportunities, they can be employed across environmental health research. SRP research teams, which comprise cross-disciplinary scientists focused on similar research questions, are well positioned to use data to leverage previous findings and accelerate the pace of research. Incorporating data streams from different disciplines addressing similar questions can provide a broader understanding and uncover the answers to complex and discrete research questions.

Can Fish and Cell Phones Teach Us about Our Health?

Biologging is a scientific endeavor that studies the environment and animals within it by outfitting the latter with sensors of their dynamics as they roam freely in their natural habitats. As wearable technologies advance for the monitoring of human health, it may be instructive to reflect on the successes and failures of biologging in field biology over the past few decades. Several lessons may be of value. Physiological sensors can "encode" for a wider number of states than the one explicitly targeted, although the limits of this are debatable. The combination of orthogonal sensors turns out to be critical to delivering a high value data set. Sensor fusion and engineering for longevity are also important for success. This Perspective highlights successful strategies for biologging that hold promise for human health monitoring.

Does increased interdisciplinary contact among hard and social scientists help or hinder interdisciplinary research?

Scientists across disciplines must often work together to address pressing global issues facing our societies. For interdisciplinary projects to flourish, scientists must recognise the potential contribution of other disciplines in answering key research questions. Recent research suggested that social sciences may be appreciated less than hard sciences overall. Building on the extensive evidence of ingroup bias and ethnocentrism in intergroup relations, however, one could also expect scientists, especially those belonging to high status disciplines, to play down the contributions of other disciplines to important research questions. The focus of the present research was to investigate how hard and social scientists perceive one another and the impact of interdisciplinary collaborations on these perceptions. We surveyed 280 scientists at Wave 1 and with 129 of them followed up at Wave 2 to establish how ongoing interdisciplinary collaborations underpinned perceptions of other disciplines. Based on Wave 1 data, scientists who report having interdisciplinary experiences more frequently are also more likely to recognise the intellectual contribution of other disciplines and perceive more commonalities with them. However, in line with the intergroup bias literature, group membership in the more prestigious hard sciences is related to a stronger tendency to downplay the intellectual contribution of social science disciplines compared to other hard science disciplines. This bias was not present among social scientists who produced very similar evaluation of contribution of hard and social science disciplines. Finally, using both waves of the survey, the social network comparison of discipline pairs shows that asymmetries in the evaluation of other disciplines are only present among discipline pairs that do not have any experience of collaborating with one another. These results point to the need for policies that incentivise new collaborations between hard and social scientists and foster interdisciplinary contact.

Large teams develop and small teams disrupt science and technology.

One of the most universal trends in science and technology today is the growth of large teams in all areas, as solitary researchers and small teams diminish in prevalence1-3. Increases in team size have been attributed to the specialization of scientific activities3, improvements in communication technology4,5, or the complexity of modern problems that require interdisciplinary solutions6-8. This shift in team size raises the question of whether and how the character of the science and technology produced by large teams differs from that of small teams. Here we analyse more than 65 million papers, patents and software products that span the period 1954-2014, and demonstrate that across this period smaller teams have tended to disrupt science and technology with new ideas and opportunities, whereas larger teams have tended to develop existing ones. Work from larger teams builds on more-recent and popular developments, and attention to their work comes immediately. By contrast, contributions by smaller teams search more deeply into the past, are viewed as disruptive to science and technology and succeed further into the future-if at all. Observed differences between small and large teams are magnified for higher-impact work, with small teams known for disruptive work and large teams for developing work. Differences in topic and research design account for a small part of the relationship between team size and disruption; most of the effect occurs at the level of the individual, as people move between smaller and larger teams. These results demonstrate that both small and large teams are essential to a flourishing ecology of science and technology, and suggest that, to achieve this, science policies should aim to support a diversity of team sizes.

Reaching across the aisle: Cross-disciplinary collaboration in otolaryngology research.

OBJECTIVES: Collaboration and diversity of expertise are increasingly emphasized in the production of successful research. However, the degree of cross-disciplinary collaboration in otolaryngology research is unknown. In this study, we quantify cross-disciplinary collaboration in otolaryngology publications. METHODS: We retrospectively analyzed authorship and study characteristics for all original articles published from January 2014 to December 2016 in three key peer-reviewed otolaryngology journals: Laryngoscope, Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, and JAMA Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery. Author affiliations and online searches were used to determine author's primary discipline. Subspecialty topic of article, study design, and funding sources were also recorded. Fisher exact test was used to compare characteristics of articles with and without cross-disciplinary authorship. RESULTS: A total of 2,378 articles were reviewed, of which 1,312 (55%) articles had one or more cross-disciplinary collaborators. Among articles with cross-disciplinary collaboration, the greatest representation of disciplines was from other medical specialties (1,109, 50.9%), epidemiology/biostatistics (266, 12.2%), pathology/histology (175, 8.0%), biologic sciences (168, 7.7%), and radiology/imaging (144, 6.6%). Cross-disciplinary studies had a significantly greater proportion of articles on the topic of head and neck compared to studies without collaboration (P < 0.0001). The proportion of funded studies was significantly greater among articles with collaboration compared to articles without collaboration (P < 0.0001). CONCLUSION: The majority of articles published during a 3-year period in three influential otolaryngology journals had cross-disciplinary collaboration. There is potential opportunity for further leveraging expertise, funding opportunities, and dissemination of key findings through collaborative research. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: NA Laryngoscope, 129:1800-1805, 2019.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Superfund Research Program: a model for multidisciplinary training of the next generation of environmental health scientists.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Superfund Research Program (SRP) funds university-based, multidisciplinary research on human health and environmental science and engineering with the central goals to understand how hazardous substances contribute to disease and how to prevent exposures to these environmental chemicals. This multi-disciplinary approach allows early career scientists (e.g. graduate students and postdoctoral researchers) to gain experience in problem-based, solution-oriented research and to conduct research in a highly collaborative environment. Training the next generation of environmental health scientists has been an important part of the SRP since its inception. In addition to basic research, the SRP has grown to include support of broader training experiences such as those in research translation and community engagement activities that provide opportunities to give new scientists many of the skills they will need to be successful in their field of research. Looking to the future, the SRP will continue to evolve its training component by tracking and analyzing outcomes from its trainees by using tools such as the NIEHS CareerTrac database system, by increasing opportunities for trainees interested in research that goes beyond US boundaries, and in the areas of bioinformatics and data integration. These opportunities will give them the skills needed to be competitive and successful no matter which employment sector they choose to enter after they have completed their training experience.