The research activities of Canadian community hospitals: A bibliometric analysis

Community hospitals represent 90% of Canadian hospitals, yet many lack the necessary infrastructure to conduct health research. This shortfall limits patient access to research studies, reduces study efficiency, and decreases the generalizability of study results. Previous work from our group identified an increase in publications from Ontario’s large community hospitals between 2013 and 2022. However, data from other Canadian provinces is lacking. This bibliometric analysis identified indexed publications from authors affiliated with Canada’s 544 community hospitals between 2018 and 2023. Among 13,689 publications, 12,472 unique articles were identified. Most were primary research articles (67%), with only 5% being clinical trials. Ontario’s community hospitals had the highest number of publications (n = 7,925), followed by Alberta (n = 2,086) and Quebec (n = 1,480). Of Canada’s 544 community hospitals, only 42% were affiliated with one or more publications from 2018 to 2023, highlighting the need to strengthen Canadian community hospital research capacity at a systems level.