Shaopei Wang et al. wanted to know who are the current “big hitters” in corneal cross-linking (CXL) research, so they performed and published a literature analysis that showed that… Farhad Hafezi is the world’s top ranked author in CXL.
What they did was analyse every journal paper published between 2001 and 2020 on the topic of CXL, and used some specialised software, VOSviewer, to analyse the data. This includes maps of who publishes with who, which journals they publish in, and analyses of keywords over time to show which research topics have been most intensely investigated over the years. In every respect, Prof. Hafezi ranked highly.
First, he was the top ranked author in CXL in terms of number of publications. His total 62 publications was 19 higher than the next-best author on the list. Prof Hafezi has three affiliations in Switzerland: The University of Zurich, the University of Geneva, and the ELZA Institute. All three were ranked in the top 10 productive organisations list. The fact that the ELZA Institute opened in 2015, and was ranked 10th on the list with 29 publications – the same number as Harvard University – is even more impressive. These publications formed helped Switzerland’s position in the top 10 productive countries, coming in at number 6. It’s worth noting that Switzerland is a far smaller country than all of the others on this list.
Reference
Wang S, Yang K, Wang Y, et al. Trends in research on corneal cross linking from 2001 to 2020: a bibliometric analysis. Clin Exp Optom. Published online February 20, 2022:1-7.
