Research Trends and Hotspots of Q Fever Research: A Bibliometric Analysis 1990-2019

Abstract

Q fever is a worldwide distributed zoonosis caused by Coxiella burnetii, a Gram-negative bacterium. Despite existence of large amount of research data on the developments related to Q fever, no bibliometric analysis of this subject is available to our knowledge. Bibliometric studies are an essential resource to track scholarly trends and research output in a subject. This study is aimed at reporting a bibliometric analysis of publications related to Q fever (2,840 articles published in the period 1990-2019) retrieved from Science Citation Index Expanded, an online database of Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Core Collection. Data was retrieved using keywords “Q fever” or “Coxiella burnetii” in title, abstract, and author keywords to describe important research indicators such as the kind and language of articles, the most important publications, research journals and categories, authors, institutions, and the countries having the most significant contribution to this subject. Finally, the emerging areas in field of diagnosis, host range, and clinical presentation were identified. Word cluster analysis of research related to Q fever revealed that major focus of research has been on zoonosis, seroprevalence, laboratory diagnosis (mainly using ELISA and PCR), clinical manifestations (abortion and endocarditis), vectors (ticks), and hosts (sheep, goat, and cattle). This bibliometric study is intended to visualize the existing research landscape and future trends in Q fever to assist in future knowledge exchange and research collaborations.

The prevalence of Q fever in the Eastern Mediterranean region: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Most of the studies were conducted in Iran, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, respectively and more than half of which were in the past five years. The results of a review on hotspots of Q fever research from 1990-2019, represented that Iran had a TP (total number of publications) of 46 (ranked 15th) and was a member of productive countries with 11 articles in 2019 27 .…”

Publication performance and trends in bruxism research: A bibliometric analysis

“…Chrcanovic had the greatest publication potential with a j of 24 followed by Tecco, Serra‐Negra and Ommerborn with a j of 20, 28 and 14, respectively. The location on the graph along with one of the curves or along a line from the origin represents different families of author publication potential or publication characteristics, respectively 25 …”

“…Ho′s group firstly proposed the ‘front page’ as a filter including the article title, abstract and author keywords 21 . This filter can avoid introducing unrelated publications for bibliometric analysis, since it was reported that big differences occurred when using the ‘front page’ as a filter in bibliometric research topics published in medical‐related journals in SCI‐EXPANDED, for example, Chinese Medical Journal , 22 World Neurosurgery , 23 Annals of Translational Medicine , 24 and BioMed Research International 25 …”

Classic publications in food security research: A bibliometric analysis

“…The "front page" filter can avoid introducing unrelated publications for bibliometric analysis. In recent years, a significant difference was found in a wide range of bibliometric studies using the "front page" as a filter, for example, research topics: Fenton oxidation for soil and water remediation (Usman & Ho, 2020), insomnia (Jallow et al, 2020), Q fever (Farooq et al, 2022), and temporomandibular disorders (Al-Moraissi et al, 2023).…”