Ten-years trend of dengue research in Indonesia and South-east Asian countries: a bibliometric analysis

ABSTRACT

Background: Dengue fever is a mosquito-borne viral disease with high incidence in over 128 countries. WHO estimates 500,000 people with severe dengue are hospitalized annually and 2.5% of those affected die. Indonesia is a hyperendemic country for dengue with an increasing number of cases in the last decade. Unfortunately, the trends of Indonesian dengue research are relatively unknown.

Objective: This research aimed to depict bibliographic trends and knowledge structure of dengue publications in Indonesia relative to that of South-east Asia (SEA) from 2007 to 2016.

Methods: Bibliographic data were collected from PubMed filtered by Indonesia country affiliation. The annual growth rate of publication was measured and compared with neighborhood countries in the SEA region. Network analysis was used to visualize emerging research issues.

Results: About 1,625 dengue-related documents originated from SEA region, of which Indonesia contributed 5.90%. The publication growth rate in Indonesia, however, is the highest in ASEAN region (28.87%). Total citations for documents published from Indonesia was 980, with an average of 14 citations per publication and h-index of 16. Within the first five years, the main research topics were related to insect vector and diagnostic method. While insect vector remained dominant in the last five years, other topics such as disease outbreak, dengue virus, and dengue vaccine started emerging.

Conclusion: In the last 10 years, dengue publications’ growth from Indonesia in international journals improved significantly, despite less number of publications compared to other SEA countries. Efforts should be made to improve the quantity and quality of publications from Indonesia. The research topics related to dengue in Indonesia are in line with studies in SEA. Stakeholders and policy makers are encouraged to develop a roadmap for dengue research in the future.