Dengue Fever: A Bibliometric Analysis of India’s Contributions to the Research Literature of This Dangerous Tropical Disease

A Bibliometric Analysis on Dengue Outbreaks in Tropical and Sub-Tropical Climates Worldwide Since 1950

Severe dengue outbreaks (DOs) affect the majority of Asian and Latin American countries. Whether all DOs always occurred in sub-tropical and tropical areas (STTA) has not been verified. We downloaded abstracts by searching keywords “dengue (MeSH Major Topic)” from Pubmed Central since 1950, including three collections: country names in abstracts (CNA), no abstracts (WA), and no country names in abstracts (Non-CNA). Visualizations were created to present the DOs across countries/areas in STTA. The percentages of mentioned country names and authors’ countries in STTA were computed on the CNA and Non-CNA bases. The social network analysis was applied to highlight the most cited articles and countries. We found that (1) three collections are 3427 (25.48%), 3137 (23.33%), and 6884 (51.19%) in CNA, WA, and Non-CNA, respectively; (2) the percentages of 94.3% and 79.9% were found in the CNA and Non-CNA groups; (3) the most mentioned country in abstracts were India, Thailand, and Brazil; (4) most authors in the Non-CNA collections were from the United States, Brazil, and China; (5) the most cited article (PMID = 23563266) authored by Bhatt et al. had 2604 citations since 2013. Our findings provide in-depth insights into the DO knowledge. The research approaches are recommended for authors in research on other infectious diseases in the future, not just limited to the DO topic.

A bibliometric analysis of dengue-related publications in the Science Citation Index Expanded

Dengue is a re-emerging infection that poses significant threat to about half of the world's population, but there was little information on the bibliometric trend and patterns of dengue research globally. The purpose of this research is to provide a bibliometric analysis of dengue research from 1991 to 2014, and to assess the relationship between the burden of dengue and scientific publications. Most papers were classified under the topics of tropical medicine, virology, infectious diseases, parasitology or immunology. India may soon surpass Thailand in the ranking. Overall, international collaboration appeared to play a significant role in dengue research. Regional specificity of dengue may also influence the bibiliometric profile of dengue research. Nevertheless, dengue research output appeared to be positively and significantly related to the level of dengue cases, an indication that the scientific community was responding well to the needs of the population.

Dengue research: a bibliometric analysis of worldwide and Arab publications during 1872-2015

BACKGROUND

Dengue is an important emerging and re-emerging arboviral infection globally as a rapidly growing and widespread public health problem, with transmission occurring in more than 128 countries in Asia, Americas, southeast Africa, western Pacific, and eastern Mediterranean regions. Therefore, the aim of this study was to characterize and quantify the scientific output of dengue research in Arab countries relative to that worldwide by using a bibliometric analysis.

METHODS

The standardized search approach based on the use of the the keyword "dengue" in the title, abstract, and keyword field was used to get research output related to dengue at a global level. All data related to dengue were collected from the past to December 31, 2015.

RESULTS

A total of 19,581 dengue-related documents identified in the Scopus database. The results show that the study of dengue exhibits an overall upward trend from 1872 to 2015 with peak publications in 2014. The leading countries in dengue research were the USA (4,709; 24.05 %), India (1,942; 9.92 %), Brazil (1,530; 7.81 %), Thailand (1,260; 6.43 %), the UK (1,129; 5.77 %), and France (1,087; 5.55 %). Only 226 (1.16 % of the overall global research effort in the dengue field) articles were published from the Arab region. The total number of citations for all publications was 352,710, with an average of 18.0 citations per publication. Furthermore, the h-index for all extracted data related to dengue research was 186. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) was the most productive country in Arab region with 102 documents representing 45.1 %. Furthermore, the h-index for all extracted data related to dengue research was 27. The USA was Arab's most main cooperative partner (46, 20.4 %), followed by India (36, 15.9 %).

CONCLUSIONS

The amount of literature related to dengue research has considerably increased over the last decade. This bibliometric analysis has demonstrated the leading role that the USA, India, Brazil, Thailand, the UK, and France play in dengue research. The Arab world produced fewer publications related to dengue with lower quality than other world countries.