Public Health Risk from Influenza Viruses: A Scientometric Analysis of Influenza Research

Seasonal influenza and novel H1N1 influenza from 2009 present worldwide difficulties for public health sectors. It is difficult to distinguish between significant research output due to the rising quantity of papers mentioning this infectious disease. We aimed to identify a scientometric analysis of influenza diseases. We aimed to highlight the progress made in the discipline by the researchers affiliated with most documents.

The h-index was used to evaluate the publication performance of highly cited papers. We retrieved the scientometric data using the keywords "Influenza" OR "Flu" OR "Orthomyxoviridae" AND "Antiviral agents" OR "Antiviral drugs." In all, 59013 documents were retrieved from the Web of Science between 2011 and 2020. The exported data to Biblioshiny and Microsoft Excel tools included sources by year, active authors, active journals, and countries. Also, we made use of quantitative analysis with scientometric indicators and knowledge mapping through the VOSviewer visualization software for creating the network visualization maps.

We found most papers written in English and other languages were from 402027 authors and listed in 4443 core journals. The researchers found that Palese P produced 155 and received an h-index of 55. The author Li Y has the highest contributions, with 313 publications. In global influenza research, Europe and North America are the most productive and impactful continents. The influenza research has been published in very few journals.

This study will help hospital librarians and other library professionals to understand the status of research on influenza at any given point in time.