India’s Contribution and Research Impact in Leishmaniasis Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

Background: Neglected Tropical Diseases identified by World Health Organization (WHO) have always been a challenge for the medical science and society. These diseases exerted high pressure on society in terms of financial, economic and psychological aspects. The three forms of Leishmaniosis (cutaneous, mucocutaneous and visceral) is one of the tropical diseases which is posing challenge in South America, East Africa, Middle East and South East Asian region. The various institutions and researchers are working towards the better health facilities. Objectives: The purpose of the study is to trace the growth of literature in leishmaniosis research for fifty years focusing the contribution and research impact made by India over global research. The specific objectives are to analyze the Indian research in terms of global publication and share, top productive countries compared with Indian research output, productive Indian institutions, authors, and their citation impact, journals publishing Indian research and highly cited articles published by Indian authors. Methods: The bibliographic data was obtained from SCOPUS database, for a period of fifty years (1968–2017) using keywords ‘leishmania’, ‘leishmaniasis’, ‘kala azar’, ‘kala-azar’ available in the title, abstract and keywords fields. The geographical location was kept ‘India’ to assess the publication and research impact for India. The citation scored by each article were taken as the number citation accumulated by the articles since its publication till 2017. The international collaboration by Indian authors in leishmaniasis was analyzed for the authors affiliation with international institutions. The individual quality measure was considered using Hirsch-index. Results: The SCOPUS has indexed 39302 articles on Leishmaniasis during the period of 1968 till 2017, of which there were 3391 published by Indian authors. It was 8.64% of global share, making it fifth most productive country on leishmaniasis research, while United States was most productive with 19.36% global share. In terms of citation count, Indian research have quite good impact and has been ranked fifth. Indian Institute of Chemical Biology was most productive Indian institute, but Banaras Hindu University Institute of Medical Sciences was most impact full. Conclusion: The continued efforts are being made to strengthen the better facilities for the research in Tropical and Neglected Disease care. The researcher working with the Indian leishmaniasis research are making good impact globally. Indian researchers have to go long way in order to eradicate the incidence of the leishmaniasis from Indian population. The results presented in this study shall be helpful for the perspective researchers and policy makers to analyse the strength of Indian Leishmaniasis research.