World Rabies Research Output: A Scientometric Assessment of Publication Output during 2006-15

The paper examines 7818 world publications on global rabies research, as indexed in Scopus database covering the period 1999-2014. The global rabies research increased by 5.87% per annum and its citation impact averaged to 14.27 citations per paper. Top 15 most productive countries continued to dominate world rabies research through 1999-2014 both in terms of quality and quantity of research. Together they accounted for as much as 83.82% share of world total output during 1999-2014. Twelve of these top countries scored relative citation index (RCI) above the world average of 1: USA (1.74), U.K. (1.70), France (1.66), Switzerland (1.62), Germany and Netherlands (1.50 each), Australia (1.44), Japan (1.39), Thailand (1.35), Canada (1.31), South Africa (1.24) and Italy (1.08) during 1999- 2014. Being a multidisciplinary topic, world rabies research is widely scattered across several disciplines. Medicine contributed the largest share 54.80%, followed by 7 other disciplines. The top 20 most productive organizations and authors engaged on rabies research respectively accounted for 40.94% and 21.42% share of publications output and 39.62% and 34.90% share of world citations during 1999-14. The world rabies research output is highly scattered across journals. Top 20 most productive journals barely accounted for 24.06% share of global rabies research. Less than 2 per cent of global rabies research papers (148) received 100 plus citations, cumulated 29160 citations, with an average of 197.03 citations per paper. These 148 highly cited papers involved the participation of 1003 authors and 502 organizations and were published in 85 journals. The USA contributed the largest number of highly cited papers (89), followed by U.K. (32), France (20), Germany (11), Canada, Australia and Belgium (7 each), Thailand and Switzerland (6 each), Japan (5), Kenya (4), South Africa, Russia Federation and Tanzania (3 each), etc. For India, rabies research is not a top priority.