Bibliometric Analysis of Surgical Articles Using Bayesian Statistics
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objectives: The study aims to investigate the landscape and trends in the use of Bayesian statistics in surgical papers published in high-impact journals over the past 2 decades, determine the characteristics of these papers, and assess the quality of Bayesian analysis reporting. Background: Observational and clinical trials have traditionally employed frequentist approaches. Bayesian framework enables the incorporation of prior evidence, flexible modeling of uncertainty, and returns a direct probabilistic summary of the estimates of interest that can provide valuable insight. However, their use in high-impact surgical research remains underexplored. Methods: Surgical articles from high-impact surgical and medical journals indexed in Web of Science and PubMed were retrieved for the period from January 2000 to August 2024. Data extraction covered bibliometrics and content details. The Reporting of Bayes Used in Clinical Studies scale (ROBUST) was used to assess Bayesian reporting quality. Results: A total of 120 articles were analyzed. The use of Bayesian statistics in surgical research has increased over time (compounded annual growth rate: 12.3%). General surgery (N = 39, 32.5%) and cardiothoracic surgery (N = 20, 16.7%) were the most represented specialties. The most common study designs were retrospective cohort studies (N = 50, 41.7%), meta-analyses (N = 38, 31.7%), and randomized trials (N = 19, 15.8%). Regression-based methods were the most frequently used (N = 51, 42.5%). The average ROBUST score was 4.1 ± 1.6 out of 7, with 54.0% (N = 54) of studies specifying priors and 29.0% (N = 29) justifying them. Conclusions: Bayesian statistics is increasingly incorporated into surgical research, predominantly observational studies and meta-analyses. However, improvements in the quality and standardization of Bayesian reporting are needed to enhance transparency and reproducibility.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Direct model labels (unvalidated)
Per-model category and study-design labels from the labeling rounds. They are machine output, unvalidated, and the disagreement between models ships as data. No study design here is MEDLINE-validated yet.
| Model arm | Categories | Study design | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| gemma | Bibliometrics Domain: not available · Genre: Review About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Observational | low |
| gpt | Bibliometrics Domain: not available · Genre: Review About the Canadian research system: no · About a Canadian topic: no | Other design | high |
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.060 | 0.390 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.207 | 0.208 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedLabeled directly by 2 models reading the full record.
The models disagree on parts of this classification; every voice is preserved in the section at the end of the page.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".