Bibliometric analysis of pathogenic organisms

Infectious diseases remain as an important public health threat to humans. Research into pathogens can be useful for planning an organized response to infectious diseases. Bibliometric analysis is an important method for scientific research and assessing capability. In this study, 100 pathogens of public health importance were selected, and the distributions of annual, national, institutional, and journal publications on Science Citation Index (SCI) journals were statistically analyzed. The United States of America ranked the first in terms of the number of relevant studies published. China attaches great importance to the prevention and control of infectious diseases, but still needs to improve in the following areas: for example, insufficient SCI reports on particular pathogens, institutions SCI reports on pathogens lower than world top pathogen research institutions, and lack of influential international pathogen-related journals. Scientific literature databases are important tools for science-of-science analysis. The findings of this study shed light on the hot spots and the ignored spots in pathogen researches, and thus would be useful for drawing a national and institutional research plan.