Fig. 1

Flowchart of the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Combined search strategy: “AD = (China or Taiwan or Hong Kong or Macau or Macao or Hongkong) and WC = (Pharmacology & Pharmacy) and TS = (Diabetes) and Indexes = SCIE and Timespan = 2009–2013”. AD address, TS topic, HK Hong Kong, WC Web of Science Category which aims to narrow search result to some specific fields of study. Institutional information was obtained from the addresses provided by authors in the target articles, and was later standardized. Records of authors belonging to a non-Chinese institute were removed