The story behind Oncotarget? A bibliometric analysis

AbstractBeing the most proliferative journal of oncology a cancer research of the past decade, the Open Access journal Oncotarget had reached more than 20,000 publications and a relatively high impact factor score in the past years. In 2018, the journal citation report decided to withdraw the status of an impact factor journal. Since there was a large discussion in the scientific community and specific reasons for the withdrawal were not stated, this bibliometric analysis was performed to assess if Oncotarget exhibits any differences in its bibliometric structure compared to other journals. For this purpose, we used the “New Quality and Quantity Indices in Sciences” platform and analyzed 20,000 Oncotarget articles. Density equalizing mapping technique helps to construct maps of cancer research in Oncotarget and shows that it has led to a unique global landscape which is not asymmetrically dominated by the Western hemisphere but exhibits a publishing architecture with a pronounced emphasis on Chinese articles.

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