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Literature velocity
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I heard an interesting lecture last week, in which the principal investigator discussed her review of the last several years of the medical literature to pull appropriate references for the topic in question. The exact topic was of interest to me but of secondary consequence.
What struck me was her observation of the “literature velocity” around this topic — or in the almost asymptotic growth of articles published on the topic with each passing year. Many of the articles, though billed as “phase-2” studies, were actually extended case series, and lots of other articles were slightly different tweaks on the same basic data sets.
I know that lots of attention has recently focused on conflict of interest and the transformation of the medical literature into an advertising medium. This concept, though, of “literature velocity” seemed to me to be an intriguing way to think about developing a metric to capture this. It would be really interesting to see how well a marker of “literature velocity” correlated with corporate strategic decisions around the drug or topic under study or other external events. The same marker could be used for both investigational studies and review articles.
This might help those who read the literature to begin to sort out science from advertising — though many times, the two of course are linked. Or it could at least gauge as a sort of interest barometer — to point toward hot topics gaining traction through the research and clinical community. What do you think? How would you use “literature velocity,” if at all?
