“Respiratory Syncytial Viruses (RSV) Infection in Children”: A Scientometric Analysis of Global Publications during 2002-21

The study reviewed the publication growth and identified key players and traced the evolution of research themes on “RSV Infection in Children”. Using Scopus database, a keyword search was undertaken, which yielded 917 research records during 2002 to 2021. The retrieved research data was analyzed using a bibliometric analysis techniques and MS-Excel software. The co-authorship network visualization of authors, organizations and countries and cooccurrence network visualization of all keywords are visualized using VOSviewer software. The 917 papers were written by 4902 authors employed at 710 organizations based in 104 countries/territories and were published in 273 journals in the field. The top journals ranked by publication productivity were Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, Journal of Infectious Diseases and PLOS One and by citation impact per paper were American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Infectious Diseases and Therapy and Journal of Pediatrics. Authors from countries contributed the most publications were USA, U.K. and China, and those contributing the most impactful publications were France, Japan and Spain. Center for Disease Control and Prevention, USA, University Medical Center Utrecht, Netherlands, and MedImmune LLC Inc. USA are the three organizations with the most productive publications and Kenya Medical Research Institute, South African Medical Research Council, South Africa and University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa are the organizations with most impactful organizations. Authors contributing the most were O. Ramilo (USA), E.A.F. Simoes (USA) and R.A. Karron (USA) and the most impactful papers were D.J. Nokes (U.K.), K.M. Edwards (USA) and C.B. Hall (USA). Based on collaboration network maps, there were significant collaborations based on common interests. According to the keyword co-occurrence diagram, the most frequent keywords are “Respiratory Synctial Virus”, “Respiratory Syncytial Pneumovirus”, “Human Respiratory Syncytial Virus”, “Hospitalization”, “Respiratory Tract Infection” and “Brochiolitis”. Analysis of 44 significant keywords showed that the research was distributed into 4 clusters, which indicates the most significant areas of current research. With the acceleration of the child diseases, the number of articles on “RSV in Children” is increasing rapidly. Bibliometric analysis of global research in this area for the last 20 years can provide useful information and meaningful reference to funding agencies and researchers, enabling them to explore current research status and identify the future areas and hotspots.