Has anesthesia research activity in Japan successfully recovered?
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EDITORIAL
Has anesthesia research activity in Japan successfully recovered? Kazuyoshi Hirota1
© Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists 2020
Medical research is the basis for the development of new therapy, diagnostics, medical equipment and elucidation of disease pathophysiology. However, the medical research environment in Japan was adversely affected by the introduction of a new postgraduate clinical training system and the shift of national universities to independent corporations in 2004. These changes resulted in the degradation of the scientific education for residents, maldistribution of residents to create a shortage of young physicians particularly in local university hospitals and deterioration of university hospitals’ finance that increased clinical work load to compensate financial deficit. As a result, many junior physicians turned their back on the degree of doctor of medicine and senior clinicians have lost research time. In a series of editorials, Journal of Anesthesia (JA) has repeatedly warned of an anesthesia research crisis in Japan [1, 2]. Thus, the Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists (JSA) members, the majority of JA readers, seemed to realize the crisis. In addition, JSA took cooperative measures to overcome the crisis. First, JSA launched JA Clinical Reports to increase the opportunity for writing clinical English papers related to their daily practice; particularly for junior anesthesiologists. Second, JSA has provided anesthesia research funds for JSA members. These JSA measures effectively produced a V-shaped recovery of publication output in 2016 [3]. To determine whether this V-shaped recovery of publication output in Japan endures, I have re-analyzed publication output from Japan to the end of 2019 in all 31 anesthesia journals categorized by Journal Citation Reports (Anesthesiology, Br J Anaesth, Anesth Analg, Eur J Anaesthesiol, Anaesthesia, Can J Anaesth, Anaesth Intensive Care, J Clin Anesth, Reg Anesth Pain Med, Acta Anaesthesiol Scand, Minerva Anestesiol, J Cardiothorac Vasc Anesth, J Neurosurg Anesthesiol, Int J Obstet Anesth, J Clin Monit Comput,
* Kazuyoshi Hirota hirotak@hirosaki‑u.ac.jp 1
Department of Anesthesiology, Hirosaki University Graduate School of Medicine, Hirosaki 036‑8562, Japan
Paediatr Anaesth, BMC Anesthesiol, JA, Pain, Eur J Pain, Clin J Pain, Pain Pract, Curr Opin Anaesthesiol, Anaesthesist, Rev Bras Anestesiol, Anasthesiol Intensivmed Notfallmed Schmerzther, Pain Physician, Schmerz, Anaesth Crit Care Pain Med, Pain Med, Anaesthesiol Intensivmed) using previous methods [1, 3]. Although publication output from China is higher than that from Japan, the output from Japan continues to increase (Fig. 1a). The output from Korea is also increasing. Annual change in total publication/100 JSA members still shows a V-shape recovery from 2012 (Fig. 2a). Previous analysis showed that publication output from Japan strongly depended on JA (about 35%) while both China and Korea did not (5.3 and 9.5%, respectively). In the present analysis, this dependence has con
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