Trends methodology

What is counted

PubDaily counts new papers in PubMed and new studies registered in ClinicalTrials.gov for 291 medical research topics in 22 specialties. Each topic is a fixed PubMed search written for it. Counts cover the last 12 months and the 12 months before, so a trend is always a comparison of two full years.

The latest data pull is dated 2026-10-18. Every topic page shows the date of its own pull.

The PubDaily Trend Score (0 to 100)

The score shows where a topic stands among all topics on four counted signals:

Momentum, 35%: growth in new papers. Evidence, 25%: growth in randomised controlled trials, meta-analyses and systematic reviews. Pipeline, 20%: new clinical trials registered, and their growth. Practice, 20%: new guidelines and consensus statements this year.

Each signal is ranked across all topics, and the score is the weighted average of those ranks. A score of 80 means the topic is ahead of about 80% of topics on the weighted signals; it is not an absolute amount. Growth is calculated against a floor of 5 papers so that going from 1 to 3 does not read as +200%.

Labels

Fast-rising: score 80 or more. Rising: 55 to 79. Steady: under 55. Emerging: fewer than 100 papers in the earlier year, where the numbers are too small to rank.

How topics are chosen

The starting list was written by hand. New topics are proposed every week from terms that appear in the last 90 days of trials, meta-analyses, reviews and guidelines in PubMed, counted for growth with no AI involved. A person approves each one before it enters the trends.

What this is not

The counts measure how much is being published and registered, not whether the findings are right or whether practice should change. Paper counts also move with indexing delays and with how a topic is searched. Use the trends to decide what to read, and read the source before acting on it.