Dengue Research: A Scientometric Mapping of World Publications

Dengue is a disease primarily characterized by headache, eye pain, skin rash, debilitating muscle, and sudden high fever. Presently, no vaccine is available to counter this disease. The best anti-dote is intrusion strategies to limit the spread of virus. This paper is an attempt to make a scientometric assessment of research on dengue during 2001-12. The data of this study is obtained from Scopus (http://www.scopus.com) multidisciplinary database, and analyzed from different angles. The study reveals that there were 9618 publications within the period under study. During the period 2001-12 annual growth rate was 13.4 percent, compared to 14.31 percent in the period 2001-2006, and 12.48 percent in 2007-2012. USA is found to be the leading country on dengue research. USA has contributed 24.88 percent of world publications. Mahidol University, Thailand, is the most productive institution which has contributed the highest number of publications (353 papers; 6502 citations; h-index value 40). Guzmán, María Guadalupe from Instituto de Medicina Tropical Pedro Kouri, was found to be the most productive author in the field of dengue research.