Nipah virus: Analysis of the scientific production in Open Access on the Web of Science, 2000 – 2020

Abstract

Introduction: the Nipah virus causes severe disease with high mortality rates in humans. Since its discovery, it has been studied for its pandemic potential and lethality. Objective: analyze the scientific production on the Nipah virus, to identify its trend at an international level. Method: a descriptive, longitudinal and retrospective study of the scientific production related to the Nipah virus published in open access on the Web of Science Core Collection between 2000 and 2020 was carried out. The information search used the equation “Nipah NOT Hendra”, and of each record Information regarding the year of publication, authors with their institutional affiliation, type of publication and title of the journal (for articles), country of origin of the authors was extracted. VOSviewer 1.6.17 was used to map the collaboration networks between authors and countries, as well as the co-citation network and the concurrency of keywords. Results: 443 documents were recovered, where 79,23 % are articles and 99,79 % were published in English. The most productive sources are: Journal of Virology and Emerging Infections Diseases. A total of 1.724 authors were identified, observing a trend towards an increase in scientific production on the Nipah virus in the period analyzed, which allows the construction of theoretical frameworks that support strategies on this virus. Conclusions: the analysis carried out responds to the WHO priority on monitoring this pathogen, classified as one of those with the greatest potential to generate pandemic outbreaks and high morbidity and mortality.