Analysis of clinical research publication patterns to characterize the cooperation among China’s “double first-class” construction medical universities: based on social network analysis

BACKGROUND: The “Double First-Class” refers to world first-class university and first-class academic discipline construction proposed by China government. The “Double First-Class” construction medical universities have made many clinical research achievements, but the analysis and evaluation of research collaboration networks in the field of clinical research are still lacking. METHODS: Clinical research papers by 23 “Double First-Class” construction medical universities in China from 2000 to 2019 indexed in the databases of the China National Knowledge Infrastructure and Web of Science (WoS) databases were collected. Through the social network analysis (SNA) method and Ucinet software, the interuniversity research cooperation networks of domestic and international publications were comparatively analyzed at the overall, individual, and group levels in terms of number of publications, cooperation network matrix, centrality analysis, cohesive subgroup analysis, and core–periphery structure to understand the developmental status of the cooperative network of clinical research publications among China’s “Double First-Class” construction medical universities. RESULTS: The cooperation among China’s “Double First-Class” construction universities showed certain regional distribution characteristics, and they showed closer cooperation in publishing papers in international journals than in domestic ones. The overall density of the domestic-journal research collaboration network of the universities was 0.4229, mainly centered on Beijing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. In contrast, the overall density of international-journal research collaboration network was 0.9052, mainly centered on Peking University, Central South University, and Zhengzhou University, with large differences in subgroup density and low integration. CONCLUSIONS: To promote the development of clinical research, it is necessary to improve the construction of the interuniversity clinical research collaboration system, build a national clinical research network with a multilevel structure and sophisticated functions, and expand resource sharing as well as collaborative innovation capacity.