Bibliometric analysis of highly pathogenic avian influenza research globally from 2003 to 2023

Despite decades of research on highly pathogenic avian influenza, especially H5N1, an understanding of the impact of research outputs on policy, the impact of funding and policies, collaboration between authors, and other bibliometric measurable indices is elusive.

H5N1 research data were retrieved from the PubMed database using "H5N1", "highly pathogenic", and "influenza" as keywords, and combined with the Boolean operator, "OR". The evaluated growth pattern of H5N1 research was analysed using Microsoft Excel, while the VOS viewer window version 1.6.15 was utilized in analyzing the keywords, authors' inputs, and collaborations amongst research institutes/universities involved in H5N1 research.

A total of 8,411 articles published within 2003 and 2023 were retrieved. The trend of the published articles indicates that 2003 to 2004 had the lowest number of articles, while the highest were observed for 2009 and 2010. Since then, there has been a gradual decline. The most dominant article type was original research article (89.80%), followed by reviews with 7.54%. The most productive countries were Japan, the United States of America, China, and Egypt in Africa. The top 15 authors accounted for 12.40% of the total published data. Keywords analysis revealed the emergence of newer keywords such as H5N8, wild birds, mammals, and Nigeria; however, as expected, influenza virus avian H5N1 subtype was the dominant keyword. Research institutes with backgrounds in agriculture and veterinary medicine dominated the top 15 organizations involved in H5N1 research.

Our findings suggest that research aimed at developing therapeutics and vaccines, as well as continuous surveillance in high-risk areas is urgently needed. Furthermore, the findings provide baseline data for all the stakeholders involved in H5N1 research, which could inform future research, funding, and policies.