Jose A. Moral-Munoz

Analyzing Highly Cited Papers in Intelligent Transportation Systems

Citation classics offer an outlook on those papers that have attracted great and historical interest by a research community and that could be also considered the basis of the research field. A new approach, which is called H-Classics, has been developed to identify such highly cited papers. It is based on the H-index and is sensitive to both the own characteristics of the corresponding research discipline and its evolution. The present study provides a useful insight into the development of the intelligent transport systems research field, revealing those scientific actors (authors, countries, and institutions) that have made the biggest research contribution to its development.

Analyzing the research in Integrative & Complementary Medicine by means of science mapping

OBJECTIVES The research in the Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) field is analyzed according to the journals indexed in ISI Web of Science. Science Mapping Analysis (SMA) is used to provide and overview of the conceptual evolution of the CAM field. METHODS The software SciMAT is used to detect and visualize the hidden themes and their evolution over a consecutive span of years. It combines SMA and performance analysis. Twenty one journals related to CAM were analyzed, in four consecutive periods from 1974 to 2011. RESULTS Strategic diagrams and the thematic evolution of CAM, together with performance indicators (h-index), were obtained. The results show that CAM research has focused on seven main thematic areas: MEDICINAL-PLANTS, CHIROPRACTIC-AND-LOW-BACK-PAIN, ACUPUNCTURE-AND-PAIN, CELL-PROCESSES-AND-DISEASES, LIPID-PEROXIDATION and DIABETES-AND-INSULIN. CONCLUSION The research output could be used by the scientific community to identify thematic areas on which interest is focused.

mDurance: A Novel Mobile Health System to Support Trunk Endurance Assessment

Low back pain is the most prevalent musculoskeletal condition. This disorder constitutes one of the most common causes of disability worldwide, and as a result, it has a severe socioeconomic impact. Endurance tests are normally considered in low back pain rehabilitation practice to assess the muscle status. However, traditional procedures to evaluate these tests suffer from practical limitations, which potentially lead to inaccurate diagnoses. The use of digital technologies is considered here to facilitate the task of the expert and to increase the reliability and interpretability of the endurance tests. This work presents mDurance, a novel mobile health system aimed at supporting specialists in the functional assessment of trunk endurance by using wearable and mobile devices. The system employs a wearable inertial sensor to track the patient trunk posture, while portable electromyography sensors are used to seamlessly measure the electrical activity produced by the trunk muscles. The information registered by the sensors is processed and managed by a mobile application that facilitates the experts normal routine, while reducing the impact of human errors and expediting the analysis of the test results. In order to show the potential of the mDurance system, a case study has been conducted. The results of this study prove the reliability of mDurance and further demonstrate that practitioners are certainly interested in the regular use of a system of this nature.

Agreement Between Face-to-face and Free Software Video Analysis for Assessing Hamstring Flexibility in Adolescents

Abstract Moral-Muñoz, JA, Esteban-Moreno, B, Arroyo-Morales, M, Cobo, MJ, and Herrera-Viedma, E. Agreement between face-to-face and free software video analysis for assessing hamstring flexibility in adolescents. J Strength Cond Res 29(9): 2661–2665, 2015—The objective of this study was to determine the level of agreement between face-to-face hamstring flexibility measurements and free software video analysis in adolescents. Reduced hamstring flexibility is common in adolescents (75% of boys and 35% of girls aged 10). The length of the hamstring muscle has an important role in both the effectiveness and the efficiency of basic human movements, and reduced hamstring flexibility is related to various musculoskeletal conditions. There are various approaches to measuring hamstring flexibility with high reliability; the most commonly used approaches in the scientific literature are the sit-and-reach test, hip joint angle (HJA), and active knee extension. The assessment of hamstring flexibility using video analysis could help with adolescent flexibility follow-up. Fifty-four adolescents from a local school participated in a descriptive study of repeated measures using a crossover design. Active knee extension and HJA were measured with an inclinometer and were simultaneously recorded with a video camera. Each video was downloaded to a computer and subsequently analyzed using Kinovea 0.8.15, a free software application for movement analysis. All outcome measures showed reliability estimates with &agr; > 0.90. The lowest reliability was obtained for HJA (&agr; = 0.91). The preliminary findings support the use of a free software tool for assessing hamstring flexibility, offering health professionals a useful tool for adolescent flexibility follow-up.

Some bibliometric procedures for analyzing and evaluating research fields

Nowadays, measuring the quality and quantity of the scientific production is an important necessity since almost every research assessment decision depends, to a great extent, upon the scientific merits of the involved researchers. To do that, many different indicators have been proposed in the literature. Two main bibliometric procedures to explore a research field have been defined: performance analysis and science mapping. On the one hand, performance analysis aims at evaluating groups of scientific actors (countries, universities, departments, researchers) and the impact of their activity on the basis of bibliographic data. On the other hand, the extraction of knowledge from the intellectual, social or conceptual structure of a research field could be done by means of science mapping analysis based on bibliographic networks. In this paper, we introduce some of the most important techniques and software tools to analyze the impact of a research field and its scientific structures. Particularly, four bibliometric indices (h, g, hg and q2), the h-classics approach to identify the classic papers of a research field and three free science mapping software tools (CitNetExplorer, SciMAT and VOSViewer) are shown.

An Overview of Thematic Evolution of Physical Therapy Research Area From 1951 to 2013

Physical Therapy is a profession which development and conceptual framework have been performed in the XX century. One of the major challenges of Physical Therapy in the XXI century is to identify the intellectual basis of its scientific domain. The aim of the present paper is to analyze the evolution of Physical Therapy research throughout scientific literature published in Web of Science and Scopus databases. In order to perform the analysis, Web of Science and Scopus bibliographic databases were used to download all records. A set of journals with overall topics in Physical Therapy discipline with the largest history in the Journal Citation Report were selected: Physiotherapy, Physical Therapy, and Australian Journal of Physiotherapy/Journal of Physiotherapy. The bibliometric tool SciMAT was employed to perform a science mapping analysis in order to detect and visualize the research themes and their evolution across three periods: 1951-1984, 1985-2000 and 2001-2013. The analysis carried out shows that Physical Therapy research field is mainly divided into nine thematic areas: Middle Aged People, Muscle Function Alterations and Recovery, Health Education, Gait and Biomechanics, Central Nervous System, Heart Rate and Exercise, Diagnosis, Low Back Pain, and Animals. In conclusion, Physical Therapy citations and production are primarily focused on two large thematic areas, diseases that involve middle-aged population and muscle function and its alterations. Results can be used to provide a historical perspective on research conducted in this emerging field and to provide a scientific evidence-based practice model on which future studies can be built.

Designing BENECA m-Health APP, A Mobile Health Application to Monitor Diet and Physical Activity in Cancer Survivors

This is the abstract of a proposed mobile health application for assessing and monitoring healthy lifestyles (in terms of diet and physical activity levels) in cancer survivors, to be fully exposed at the IWANN 2017. The main goal of this mobile health application is to help cancer patients with energy imbalance, which can increase the risk of recurrence and other associated problems, such as metabolic syndrome and even death, to adhere to the international healthy recommendations in terms of diet and physical activity. The system, called BENECA m-Health app, is still in development, and will be a reliable instrument to assess physical activity and diet in cancer survivors, offering them a real-time energy balance feedback and attempting to overcome specific identified barriers to facilitate the inclusion of exercise and healthy diet into supportive care programs for cancer survivors. This mobile application has been designed to address the new needs for support of breast cancer survivors, reflecting the emerging need to merge new, low cost treatment options. This m-Health System could be a promising approach for dietary and physical assessment, as well as for intervention programs, which can be used whenever and wherever patients want.

Aiding in the Treatment of Low Back Pain by a Fuzzy Linguistic Web System

Low back pain affects a large proportion of the adult population at some point in their lives and has a major economic and social impact. To soften this impact, one possible solution is to make use of recommender systems, which have already been introduced in several health fields. In this paper, we present TPLUFIB-WEB, a novel fuzzy linguistic Web system that uses a recommender system to provide personalized exercises to patients with low back pain problems and to offer recommendations for their prevention. This system may be useful to reduce the economic impact of low back pain, help professionals to assist patients, and inform users on low back pain prevention measures. A strong part of TPLUFIB-WEB is that it satisfies the Web quality standards proposed by the Health On the Net Foundation (HON), Official College of Physicians of Barcelona, and Health Quality Agency of the Andalusian Regional Government, endorsing the health information provided and warranting the trust of users.

Thematic Trends in Complementary and Alternative Medicine Applied in Cancer-Related Symptoms

Abstract Purpose The main goal of this study is to discover the scientific evolution of Cancer-Related Symptoms in Complementary and Alternative Medicine research area, analyzing the articles indexed in the Web of Science database from 1980 to 2013. Design/Methodology/Approach A co-word science mapping analysis is performed under a longitudinal framework (1980 to 2013). The documental corpus is divided into two subperiods, 1980–2008 and 2009–2013. Thus, the performance and impact rates, and conceptual evolution of the research field are shown. Findings According to the results, the co-word analysis allows us to identify 12 main thematic areas in this emerging research field: anxiety, survivors and palliative care, meditation, treatment, symptoms and cancer types, postmenopause, cancer pain, low back pain, herbal medicine, children, depression and insomnia, inflammation mediators, and lymphedema. The different research lines are identified according to the main thematic areas, centered fundamentally on anxiety and suffering prevention. The scientific community can use this information to identify where the interest is focused and make decisions in different ways. Research limitation Several limitations can be addressed: 1) some of the Complementary and Alternative Medicine therapies may not have been included; 2) only the documents indexed in Web of Science are analyzed; and 3) the thematic areas detected could change if another dataset was considered. Practical implications The results obtained in the present study could be considered as an evidence-based framework in which future studies could be built. Originality/value Currently, there are no studies that show the thematic evolution of this research area.

Highly cited papers in rheumatology: identification and conceptual analysis

Rheumatology is a broad research area with an extensive background in scientific publications. Thus, the present study aims to identify the highly cited papers in Rheumatology research field, analyzing some aspects such as the documents distribution by years, journals, authors, institutions and countries. Furthermore, a conceptual evolution and a co-word analysis have been performed. In order to carry out this study, the H-Classics methodology, based on widely used H-index, has been used. A total of 317 highly cited papers have been detected from a total amount of 103.175 documents (articles and reviews) indexed in the Rheumatology category of the Web of Science database, from the period 1945–2016. As a result, it is obtained that Arthritis and Rheumatism is the journal with the highest number of documents, with more than half of detected documents. Professor Emery, from the University of Leeds (UK), and professor Felson, from the Boston University (USA), are the authors with more highly cited papers. The University of California (USA) and the University of Stanford (USA) are the main institutional contributors. USA is the leading producer, with more than half of the highly cited papers, but it is interesting to highlight the position reached by Peoples R. China, Mexico and, South Africa when an adjustment index based in the GDP per capita is applied. Osteo-arthritis and monoclonal antibody are the leader topics of this set of documents. The present study shows a useful insight into the development and evolution of the Rheumatology research field, revealing actors that have made the most significant research contribution to its development.