“Then and Now,” Mapping the 25 Year Evolution and Impact of North American Vascular Biology Organization Science Through Publications of its Founding and Current Members

Abstract

Scholarly organizations bring together experts to move forward specific areas of scientific endeavor. More than 5,000 scholarly societies exist world-wide yet little is known about the composition, evolution, and collaboration of experts within these organizations. This study presents general methods to study the evolution of a biomedical organization and its impact over time. Methods are illustrated in a case study that aims to capture the “Then and Now” science of the North American Vascular Biology Organization (NAVBO). Publications authored by the founding members who came together to create NAVBO in 1994 are compared with publications by those representing the society 25 years later. Google Scholar data was compiled for NAVBO members registered in 1994 (n = 70) and in 2019 (n = 465), some members being present in both data sets (n = 22). The 501 unique NAVBO members had more than 76,000 papers cited over 4,400,000 times. Several characteristics associated with the NAVBO members’ output were revealed, including their high productivity, the high impact of their publications, and the predominant contribution of relatively small laboratories, as suggested by a low average number of authors per publication. To understand how NAVBO fostered scientific collaborations and exchanges of expertize, data was analyzed and visualized to show the evolution of member co-author networks. The UCSD Map of Science was used to communicate the evolution of scientific topics covered by NAVBO members helping to create a global picture of NAVBO’s science “then and now.” All workflows are available online in case other scholarly organizations would want to use them to map their own evolution and impact; and meta studies that communicate the inner workings of these important scholarly efforts can be conducted.