A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE OF RISK ASSESSMENT APPLICATIONS IN REGULATORY TOXICOLOGY Wen-Sheng Ko 1, Wen-Ta Chiu 2, Wen-Sen Lee 3 and Yuh-Shan Ho 4 1 Department of Internal Medicine, Taipei Medical University - Wan-Fang Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan 2 Department of Neurosurgery, Taipei Medical University - Wan-Fang Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan 3 Department of Infectious Disease, Taipei Medical University -Wan-Fang Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan 4 Bibliometric Centre, Taipei Medical University - Wan-Fang Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan Introduction Bibliometrics is a type of research method used in library and information sciences. It utilizes quantitative analysis and statistics to describe patterns of publications within a given topic, field, institute, or country. One common way of conducting bibliometric research is to use the Science Citation Index (SCI) databases to trace documents. The objective of the study was to perform a bibliometric analysis of all literature of risk assessment applications in regulatory toxicology in the Science Citation Index (SCI). Analyzed parameters included authorship, patterns of international collaboration, journal, language, document type, and author’s address. Methods Documents used in this study were based on the databases of the SCI which was accessed from the ISI Web of Science, Philadelphia, PA, USA. A keyword search, using the following terms, was performed to identify risk assessment applications in regulatory toxicology studies published between 1991 and 2004: risk assessment, risk assessments, safety evaluation, health assessment, health assessments, health risk assessment, health risk assessments, regulatory toxicology, regulation, regulations, guideline, and guidelines. Table 2. Publication activity of top ten countries Table 1. Major characteristics of the production of hyperthermia and cancer researchResults Ten document types were found in the total of 1,622 documents. English was the dominant language with 28% of the articles being authored by single author. AU: No. of authors PG: Page count NR: Cited reference count J: No. of journals P: No. of articles IP: single country publications CP: international collaboration publications Figure 1. Annual publication outputConclusions  The yearly production has increased with the United States producing 37% the articles followed by the UK with 15% contribution.  The G7 industrial countries (U.S.A., U.K., Germany, Canada, Italy, France, and Japan) represent a share of corresponding authors of 76% of world articles.  Four percent of all articles were published in Human and Ecological Risk Assessment.  The most frequently used author keyword in risk assessment research was ‘risk management’ and followed by ‘regulation’, ‘guidelines’, ‘risk’, and ‘risk analysis’.  Human and Ecological Risk Assessment published the most traditional Chinese medicine articles (54; 4.0%), followed by Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology (43; 3.2%), Toxicology Letters (41; 3.0%), and Environmental Health Perspectives (34; 2.5).