50-Year Bibliometrics of International Scientific Biomedical Publications on "Parasitic Diseases": MEDLINE...

The objective of this bibliometric study, spanning half a century of international biomedical research (1970-2019), on "parasitic diseases", was to describe the editorial profile; methodological and thematic of these scientific publications.

The data were collected from the MEDLINE database, through a documentary query based on the descriptor "Parasitic Diseases", and analyzed according to their main editorial characteristics (types of publication, scientific journals, etc.), methodological (country, parasitic diseases, etc.) and themes (key words), deduced particularly from the fields of its Medical Subjects Heading (MeSH), following a stratification into two periods: A (1970-1994) and B (1995-2019). "Highly Cited" papers were identified through Web of Science.

A total of 337157 publications were identified (A: 110,062; B: 227095) and indexed by 20881 MeSH descriptors (A: 11 817; B: 19640). Published in 6470 scientific journals, these publications particularly covered the specialties of "Infectious Diseases" (37%), "Gastrology/Hepatology" (22%) and "Pediatrics" (20%). Conducted particularly in Brazil (2.6%), these studies were often "retrospective" (2.8%). The descriptor "Intestinal Diseases Parasitic" was the most explored thematic category (2.8%). In addition to "Malaria" (11.3%), the most studied diseases were "Echinococcosis" (2.9%), "Visceral Leishmaniasis" (2.7%) and "Toxoplasmosis" (2.5%). Bibliometric trends were characterized by an increase in "Reviews" (12.4% versus 7.5%), a switch from an "immunology" approach (24261 publications) to another "epidemiology" (70012 articles) and more focus on "Malaria Falciparum". Only 329 articles were qualified as "Highly Cited" (1‰).

The bibliometric profile of international publications on "Parasitic Diseases", over the last half century, has been characterized by an explosion of synthetic studies, covering a broad spectrum of scientific journals, focused on low- or middle-income countries and centred on malaria.