Doctor Qiang Yao
Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Wuhan 430072, P. R. China
Tel: +86 278766 4285
Fax: +86 27 6876 2505
E-mail: yaoqiang@scinet.cn
Nov. 10 th , 2012
Thank you very much for your letter and the comments from reviewers. I am very grateful to the comments for our manuscript (ID 1555105883763806). According to the advices, we revised the relevant parts of our manuscript for your approval.
Base on the reviewers’ comments and requests, we have made extensive modification on the original manuscript. All the questions were addressed below.
Should you have any questions, please contact us without any hesitate.
With all my best regards!
Comments and response:
Reviewer #1:
General Comments
1. Is the question posed by the authors well defined? Yes
2. Are the methods appropriate and well described? Yes
3. Are the data sound? Yes
4. Does the manuscript adhere to the relevant standards for reporting and data deposition? Yes, but discussion is mixed with results.
Response: The composing of this manuscript was adhered to the instruction of the journal in which the conclusion and discussion could be mixed together, so in our manuscript the discussion section was arranged just after the results analysis.
This can be found in
：
Results and discussion
The Results and discussion may be combined into a single section or presented separately. Results of statistical analysis should include, where appropriate, relative and absolute risks or risk reductions, and confidence intervals.

5. Are the discussion and conclusions well balanced and adequately supported by the data? Yes
6. Are limitations of the work clearly stated? No
Response: The limitations of the work were added in the Data sources section.
Such as “However, the benefits of using bibliometric search terms are always debatable. There are two criteria commonly used for analysis of bibliometric search terms, that of recall and precision. Recall refers to the ability of the term to minimize the number of relevant documents missed. Precision refers to the ability of the search term to minimize the number of irrelevant records retrieved.”
7. Do the authors clearly acknowledge any work upon which they are building, both published and unpublished? Yes
8. Do the title and abstract accurately convey what has been found? Yes
9. Is the writing acceptable? Yes with minor corrections recommended in terms of sentence construction.
Response: In the later version of our manuscript a professor come from
Indiana University was invited to edit our paper for sentences construction and other corrections carefully already.
Minor Essential Revisions:
Overall this is an interesting article that provides a systematic review of publications in Translational. Although overall it is quite well organized in scientific content and analyses, several grammatical mistakes in sentence construction are scattered throughout the document. In the methods, results, and conclusions sections, for instance, there is no consistency in using the past tense and present tense thus not making it suitable for publication yet. The results and discussion sections are also mixed together, and this does not follow the typical format for reporting these sections in a journal.
Response: The tense and the grammatical mistakes in the sentence construction are carefully revised in the new version of our manuscript already. The discussion and results sections were mixed together to interpret all the data better and not disobey the instruction of the journal as it is now.
Minor corrections in spelling, such as “Rearch” in the title for figure 1 must be corrected.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field Quality of written English:
Needs some language corrections before being published
Response: I’m sorry to compose the paper with some spelling mistakes in words and all the language problems were carefully corrected already.
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Reviewer #2:
1. Is the question posed by the authors well defined?
The definition of the question addresses could be defined more clearly and succinctly. This needs to be done in the last paragraph of the Introduction.
Response: The introduction and the background part of our manuscripts were rewritten following the reviewers’ requirements and the question addresses were redefined in the new version. We provide a comprehensive bibliometric analysis and substantial discussion of research progress in translational medical research.
Moreover, the results provide evidence of the current status and trends in translational medical research.
Specifically:
• It begins ‘Despite the importance and high growth rate of the subject area’. It would be clearer to define ‘the subject area’.
Response: The statement of “ the subject area ” was corrected as
“ translational medical research
”
and the last paragraph of the Introduction was recomposed. So despite the importance and high growth rate of translational medical research both in theory and practice, there have been few attempts to map research efforts related to translational medical research in a global context.
•
The second sentence is not clear. The word ‘that’ seems out of place and the word
‘could’ make the case very weakly. Isn’t ‘identify focuses of future’ the same as future trends? If so then this phrase is superfluous.
• The third sentence is also weakened by use of the word ‘could’. To take an extreme example: the moon could be made of green cheese.
Response: The words ‘ could’ were removed from these sentences to enhance the meaning and the superfluous phrase were combined following the useful suggestions.
• Past tense is employed (‘appropriate statistical tests were used’) in a way that seems inappropriate in an introduction.
Response: All the past tense in the introduction part was corrected into the present tense instead.
• The last sentence fails to provide a clear and succinct description of the aim and scope of the study.
Response: The last sentence of this part was extended to a paragraph to interpret the scope and aim of this study, which is therefore to evaluate the global progress and quantitative assessment of current research trends on translational medical research.
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2. Are the methods appropriate and well described?
The methods used are appropriated and well described.
3. Are the data sound?
The data presented appear to be sound but there are important caveats that are not discussed.
Response: The data was recollected and the retrieve strategy as well as data cleaning work done in the new version of our manuscript.
Based on the former search strategy, a total of 5,751 publications were identified in the SCI and SSCI databases within all-time spans. Papers originating from England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales are grouped under the UK heading, while those from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan are not included under the China heading. The relevant articles were extracted using text-supplied keywords.
4. Does the manuscript adhere to the relevant standards for reporting and data deposition? Yes.
5. Are the discussion and conclusions well balanced and adequately supported by the data?
• The ‘Conclusions’ section is not introduced well by the first paragraph of this section. The authors should revise to improve clarity and grammar.
Response: The first paragraph of this section was revised carefully to improve clarity and grammar in the conclusion section.
• It should be ‘G7 countries’ not ‘G7’.
Response: G7 was corrected as G7countries in the later manuscript.
• Many sentences are too long or don’t lead anywhere or confusing or combinations of these.
Response: The language was revised both by us and a professional professor to enhance the structure and the grammar for publication.
• The final sentence (‘the findings of this study can help relevant researchers understand the performance of translational medicine research in the world, and suggest directions for further research’) needs to be revised and qualified. How can the study suggest directions for further research?
Response: The present developing trend was recalled using the bibliometric method to study the foci and front of translational medicine through the publication, subjects, journals, countries and institutes analysis in this study. All the information will take informative reference for researchers or decision makers, helping them choose the right journal to publish, proper organization to corporate
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and frontier fields to study etc. It is certain that we can’t give all detailed information for future research and that is also what we aim for.
• The authors describe their retrieval strategy, which uses the terms "translat* medicin*" or "translat* scienc*" or "translat* research*" or "translat* medical*.
However, they are mapping the use of the term translat*, so they need to make it clear that they are not mapping all translational research studies as there are many such studies published that do not use the term ‘translational’.
•
The cross county comparisons will clearly be influenced by differences in the use of the word ‘translational’. This needs to be considered and may explain why the US is
‘ahead of the curve’ in Fig. 8.
Response: With the help of MeSH subject words the retrieval strategy was rearranged to improve the precious for this paper. However, the benefits of using bibliometric search terms are always debatable. There are two criteria commonly used for analysis of bibliometric search terms, that of recall and precision. Recall refers to the ability of the term to minimize the number of relevant documents missed. Precision refers to the ability of the search term to minimize the number of irrelevant records retrieved. In order to improve the two criteria, papers in journals whose name contains “translat*” are also included, and the papers which do not belong to medicine-related subjects are excluded.
While the identification of the appropriate terms identifying translational medical research may be a matter for further studies, we suggest that these terms provide an adequate balance for the objectives of this investigation, as they are in accordance with previous investigations as discussed in the methodology section.
While because the precision and veracity is an eternal topic which can’t be perfect, so what we can do is only constantly optimize with it. This study used a retrieval strategy reflecting the main status of translational medicine. At the same time it used citation analysis method to expand further to recall missed literatures.
6. Are limitations of the work clearly stated? No
Response: The limitations of the method were written in the Data and methods section.
7. Do the authors clearly acknowledge any work upon which they are building, both published and unpublished? Yes
8. Do the title and abstract accurately convey what has been found?
• The term ‘Translational medicine related literature’ is slightly confusing. It is literature about Translational medicine research.
Response: Translational medical research means the study of translational research articles.
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• What are ‘The bibliometric method and knowledge visualization technology’?
Response: Bibliometrics is often used to assess scientific research through quantitative studies on research publications. Bibliometric assessments are based on the assumption that most scientific discoveries and research results eventually are published in international scientific journals where they can be read and cited by other researchers. And the bibliometric method is also a tool by which the state of science and technology can be observed through the overall production of scientific literature, at a given level of specialization in international research. This tool provides an approach for situating a country in relation to the world, an institution in relation to a country, and individual scientists in relation to their peers.
Visualization technology, which was also called knowledge mapping technology.
Knowledge mapping is data gathering, survey, exploring, discovery, conversation, disagreement, gap analysis, education and synthesis. It aims to track the loss and acquisition of information & knowledge, personal and group competencies and proficiencies, show knowledge flows, appreciate the influence on intellectual capital due to staff loss, assist with team selection and technology matching. The map of the keywords can forecast the future trend of a science subject well.
The Thomson Data Analyzer (TDA), and VOSviewer software are employed to get a contour map in this paper, which called knowledge mapping technology too.
Knowledge visualization technologies are equally suitable for macro-analysis (e.g., a given country’s share in global output of scientific literature over a specified period) and microstudies (e.g., a given institute’s role in producing articles in a particular field or specialty of science). The map of the keywords can forecast the future trend of a science subject well.
• What do the authors mean by ‘top countries’?
Response: Top countries mean those countries that produced most publications, and we abbreviate it for short as our peers do.
• The term ‘translational medicine research’ implies research on a single medicine.
Should it not be ‘medicines’?
Response: ‘ Translational medicine research’ is a term from the standard words table in database that mean translational medical research in this article, not only mean translational medicines research.
• The ‘Conclusion’ section does not contain a clear and succinct conclusion.
Response: The Conclusion section was rewritten to give a clear and succinct conclusion in the new version of our manuscript.
9. Is the writing acceptable? No, not completely.
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Response: The writing of this paper was rearranged carefully by us and revised by an America professor from Indiana University to meet the requests this time, wish it can meet the journal’s standard for your consideration.
10. Other comments
The title is not optimal. The word ‘performance’ doesn’t fit – the successful performance of translational medicine research results in new medicines. The title needs to be modified.
Response: The word performance was removed from the title and it was arranged as “New insights into global translational medicine research trend”.
Level of interest: An article of importance in its field.
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being published
Response: We treat our language corrections for many times lasting nearly one month before submitting. Wish it can meet your journal’s publishing standards.
Reviewer #3:
This is an interesting, thorough and well written paper. The authors seek to describe the growth in translational research by systematically searching publications that include the word “translation”. This provides interesting information about the growth of the use of the terminology. However it is difficult to know if this accurately reflects the shape of actual translational research activity. The term was first used in the early
90s and has been popularized in several key reviews subsequently. It is thus not surprising that the use of the term has grown since then. But has the amount of translational research actually increased? It would be illogical to think there was no translational research before 1990. People did it but they just didn’t call it translational.
Thus following the terminology does not follow the activity.
A problem is that some of these papers are editorials or review articles. These do not reflect translational research activity.
Response: We expanded our search strategy to ensure its precision and interpret the retrieval strategy in the method section, then redraw most of the figures in our text. If the early study involves translational medical research, it will generally be referred to translational medicine in the text and can be detected by the standard retrieval words. In addition, before 90s there were some literatures not mentioned translation but were indeed translational medical research articles in the database. These papers may be missed, but not for much, at the same time, by citation analysis, some of the earlier critical literature about translational medical literature will be found back again.
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The papers of editorials or review articles were excluded through choosing the paper type as articles. Thank you very much for your advice and it is really precious for us to modify our manuscript.
Another difficult problem is the definition of the term. Translation means very different things to different people. For some it refers only to the bridge between pre-clinical to clinical. For others it means the gap from clinical evidence to clinical practice. Others mean it to be the whole process. It is also a problem in that there is translational research (i.e. research that can be applied across the gap), research translation (the process of passing the knowledge over the gap) and research into translation (the process of making the being easier by changing the way we do research). Once again the word translation is often confused between the three. Indeed perhaps the reason why there is a plateau in recent years in the data is because people have found the word itself to be not particularly useful to describe the activity.
Response: It is indeed the translational medicine have no unified definition up until now so we made a lot of discussion in our introduction and summarized the entire mode such 2T, 3T and 4T, in fact the concept of translational medicine is in its continuous developing process in the present.
As a general point the paper often repeats data in figures and texts the paper would be stronger if the authors could indicate why the data are important. What do we do with the data? For example: why is knowing the citation index or such papers interesting?
Response: Each figure or table was explained and the data was mined carefully.
For the limitation of the condition it is difficult to analyze comprehensively, while all the facts were shown in the text to readers.
A small point is that the NCATS was not set up to promote translation of research findings into clinical practice. It was set up to promote the discovery of new research paradigms that would enhance translation. i.e. research into translation.
Response: The introduction of the organization NCATS was removed following the reviewer’s suggestion.
Quality of written English: Needs some language corrections before being published
Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician.
Response: Professor Connors Kathleen Diane from Indiana University was invited to edit our manuscript carefully already. Wish the new manuscript could meet your journal’s publication standard.
Thank you very much for all your efforts to review our manuscript!
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