• Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
• Publications close
• Research data close
• Other research products close
• CN close
• Scientometrics close
• OpenAIRE close

Background: Centralizing procurement for prescription drugs has the potential to reduce drug spending by creating economies of scale and by improving purchasing power. In March 2019, the Chinese government launched a volume-based purchasing (VBP) pilot program using a competitive bidding process to purchase high-quality generic drugs for which branded drug substitutes were available. We evaluated the impact of introducing the VBP pilot on drug purchase quantity and spending. Methods: We performed an interrupted time-series design to estimate the change in monthly drug purchase quantity and spending comparing fourteen months before and seven months after the VBP pilot. We obtained monthly prescription drug purchase data for all purchases from public hospitals in the three large pilot cities (Beijing, Shanghai and Xi’an) and two non-pilot cities (Changsha and Zhengzhou) between January 2018 to September 2019. We measured quantity and spending outcomes separately for the branded and generic substitutes that were selected in the VBP, and other drugs for the treatment of the same diseases. We evaluated heterogeneity of impact by pilot city, drug type, and therapeutic class (cardiovascular disease, mental disorder and cancer) separately. Findings: The VBP pilot in these three cities covered 60 million individuals. The implementation of the pilot reform was associated with a 132% (95%-CI: 104%-165%, p<0·001) increase in the purchase quantity of selected drugs in pilot cities compared to an 17% decrease (95%-CI: 9%-25%, p<0·001) in control cities. In contrast, the purchase quantity of branded and other drugs in pilot cities decreased by 38% (95%-CI: 27%-46%, p<0·001) and 77% (95%-CI: 71%-81%, p<0·001), respectively; while in control cities, these remained at similar levels. Overall, there was a 35% (95%-CI: 28%-41%, p<0·001) decrease in the purchase spending for all drugs in the first post-policy month, from 8·1 billion CNY estimated in the absence of VBP down to 5·3 billion CNY. The largest reduction in spending was in Shanghai and from drugs for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Interpretation: The evidence suggests positive impact of the VBP pilot in reducing the overall drug spending and increasing the use of high-quality generics in three pilot cities. This overall trend is not observed in two non-pilot cities. Assessment of long-term impact of the VBP policy is needed on various outcomes such as drug prescription and utilization patterns, patients’ health outcomes and spending. Funding: None to declare. Declaration of Interest: None to declare.

This paper aimed to provide an approach to investigate the historical roots and evolution of research fields in China by extending the reference publication year spectroscopy (RPYS). RootCite, an open source software accepts raw data from both the Web of Science and the China Social Science Citation Index (CSSCI), was developed using python. We took iMetrics in China as the research case. 5,141 Chinese iMetrics related publications with 73,376 non-distinct cited references (CR) collected from the CSSCI were analyzed using RootCite. The results showed that the first CR in the field can be dated back to 1882 and written in English; but the majority (64.2%) of the CR in the field were Chinese publications. 17 peaks referring to 18 seminal works (13 in English and 5 in Chinese) were located during the period from 1900 to 2017. The field shared the same roots with that in the English world but has its own characteristics, and it was then shaped by contributions from both the English world and China. The five Chinese works have played irreplaceable and positive roles in the historical evolutionary path of the field, which should not be ignored, especially for the evolution of the field. This research demonstrated how RootCite aided the task of identifying the origin and evolution of research fields in China, which could be valuable for extending RPYS for countries with other languages. Comment: 19 pages,9 figures

Intriguing unforced regularities in human behaviors have been reported in varied research domains, including scientometrics. In this study we examine the manuscript submission behavior of researchers, with a focus on its monthly pattern. With a large and reliable dataset which records the submission history of articles published on 10 multidisciplinary journals and 10 management journals over a five-year period (2013-2017), we observe a prominent turn-of-the-month submission effect for accepted papers in management journals but not multidisciplinary journals. This effect gets more pronounced in submissions to top-tier journals and when the first day of a month happens to be a Saturday or Sunday. Sense of ceremony is proposed as a likely explanation of this effect, since the first day of a month is a fundamental temporal landmark which has a 'fresh start effect' on researchers. To conclude, an original and interesting day-of-the-month effect in the academia is reported in this study, which calls for more research attention.

We present the distribution of astronomical papers published by Chinese authors in 1986–1990 across the various subfields of astronomy, the total number of papers produced by each observatory or university during the five years, and the ranking of the observatories by productivity. Our main data base includes 24 journals: 9 foreign ones published in English, 10 Chinese national ones, and 5 Chinese observatory publications. About 70 journals published by Chinese universities have also been consulted. This data base covers up to 90% of all astronomical papers published during this period.