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

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INTRODUCTION
The health sector is very critical towards the right information on certain diseases.The critical input for policy decision making, it is essential to provide right source of information about

METHODOLOGY
This study is undertaken on the publications on Leishmaniasis by Indian research community.The data is collected from SCOPUS multidisciplinary bibliographic database available over http://www.scopus.com/home.url.The SCOPUS is having hundred percent coverage of PubMed data.The Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) Terms "Leishmania", "Leishmaniasis", "Cutaneous Leishmaniasis", "Mucocutaneous Leishmaniasis", "Visceral leishmaniasis" available in the article title, abstract and keywords, has been used to retrieve bibliographic data and "India" was used for the country of affiliation of the author using following string for the period 1968 till 2017.
The research impact of publication was taken in terms of citation count.The citation study has been taken as the number of citations received by the articles in first year of its publication (C 0 ) and till the year 2017 (C 2017 ).For the international collaboration, each article published from India was manually analyzed to see the collaboration by Indian authors with International authors.In combination with the above string, separate search strategies have been adopted to retrieve the data for individual, institutional and journal output.Thus, the data obtained using the different search strategies has been subjected to data analysis and interpretation of results.Another quality indicator, h-Index, which quantify the individual quality of the author and Institution was obtained from the database.The data thus obtained from SCOPUS was analyzed for global output, Indian output, share of publication, productive country, productive Indian institute, productive Indian authors, journals publishing Indian articles, international collaboration by Indian authors, and most cited articles authored by Indian authors.

RESULTS
There were 39302 articles available in SCOPUS during 1968 till 2017 (50 Years) on Leishmaniasis.Out of these, 3391 articles were published by authors from India. Figure 1 shows the trends of growth of literature output published globally and India.The global output averaged at 6.19% annual growth rate while India achieved an annual average growth rate of 20.60% per year.Indian research on Leishmaniasis was in infancy state till 1987 (3.45% share) and adolescent up to 2007 (36.21% share) and matured thereafter (60.34% share) (Table 1).In case of the global publication, 44.64% literature were parasitic disease, spread by the bite of female Phlebotomine Sandflies.There are three forms of the disease; cutaneous, mucocutaneous, or Visceral leishmaniasis; of which later has been estimated as most dangerous among all.It is sharing a 90% of prevalence across the globe but frequent in the population residing in the region of Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Nepal, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and the Sudan. [5]e research focused on Neglected Tropical Disease across the globe has posed a quite challenge for everyone being medical practitioners or policy makers.World Health Organization report on the leishmaniasis is in alarming situation due to new cases in the region of East Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan and Sudan) have caused high morbidity and mortality due to Visceral leishmaniasis. Visceral leishmaniasis have affected about 67% Global Burden of Diseases in India, Bangladesh, Nepal. [8]vernmental and Non-Governmental agencies are playing a key role in elimination of the disease from the affected communities with the help of effective medication, vaccination and community services.Simultaneously, the medical practitioners are engaged in discovering the effective medication to control the disease.The scientists are working specially the countries of the most affected region to discover new medicine and treatment methods.These efforts are available as published literature and available as guiding path for future.
Various qualitative and quantitative assessment measures are being taken to analyze the research progress in scientific disciplines including leishmaniasis.In earlier days, the bibliometric studies were covering the different aspects of neglected tropical diseases such as Latin American studies [9][10] and social science research. [11]But after 2011 onwards specific research were conducted related to leishmaniasis in general; [12][13] or for specific countries and region such as Iran, [14][15] Latin America, [16] South America. [17]The bibliometric study focusing India were reported in parasitic and neglected tropical disease; [18] lymphatic filariasis; [19] and other neglected tropical diseases such as Ascariasis/Toxocariasis, [20] and Schistosomiasis. [21]owever, these literature does not reveal any study covering the research impact of India in the field of leishmaniasis.The objective of this study is analyze literature on leishmaniasis published from India and its research impact in terms of total publication compared with global output, productive institutions, productive authors, productive journals, international collaboration, most popular articles on qualitative parameters citation and Hirch-Index (h-index). [22]ppeared the period of 2008-17 and in case of India, it was 60.34%.The period from 1978-1987 was highly productive in case of average percent growth rate when World literature growth was 127.94% and Indian literature growth was 357.14% than its previous period.For India, the highly productive year was 1979, 1999, and 2014.5] Table 2 presents the distribution of 11 most productive countries on Leishmaniasis with more than two percent of global publications.The global publication ranges from 2.63% to 19.36%, where United States holds top rank with the highest number of publications (7609 papers; 19.36% share), followed by Brazil (6019 papers; 15.31% share) and United Kingdom (3548 papers; 9.03% share).India ranked fourth in terms of total publication (3391 papers; 8.64% share).France, Spain, Germany, Iran, Italy, Switzerland and Canada ranked from fifth to eleventh.The etiological evidence of Leishmaniasis in these countries ranges epidemics of the disease. [26] terms of citation impact by these countries, the articles published from USA have accumulated highest number of citations (317646 citations) with an Average Citation Per Paper (ACPP) of 1.75 citations per paper.The articles published from United Kingdom had 1,39,870 citations with ACPP of 39.42 citations per paper and Brazil had 1,06,261 citations with an ACPP of 17.65 citations per paper.Articles published from Canada were most frequently cited and were more impactful with an ACPP of 44.99 citations per paper, followed by Switzerland (ACPP=43.59).Indian papers accumulated 69,985 citations and ranked fifth, with an ACPP of 20.61 citations.
The quality parameter used for benchmarking [27] based on Hirsch Index, USA has highest value (h-Index=211) followed by United Kingdom (h-Index=149) and Germany (h-Index=110).The India has h-Index value of 93, which make it ranked eighth, higher than Spain, Italy and Iran.
In this study, it is found that there were ten Indian institutes, which had published hundred or more articles on various aspect of leishmaniasis during 1968-2017.The publication performance of these ten Indian institutions was measured in terms of total publication, publication share, total citations, average citation per paper and h-Index is given in Table 3.It is found that these ten institutes had contributed 76.41% of total Indian publication on leishmaniasis.'Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata' topped the rank with 566 articles (16.69% share), followed by Banaras Hindu University Varanasi (419 publications; 12.36% share) and Central Drug Research Institute Lucknow (376 publications; 11.09% share).Other institutes ranked from 4 th to 10 th and the percent share of publication ranges from 9.73% to 3.04%.These most productive Indian institutions have accumulated a total of 67,250 citations with an ACPP of 25.96 citations.The Banaras Hindu University was most impactful with highest   [30,31] P. Salotra has highest h-Index value of 93.
The second most impactful author was S. Sunder with 16255 citations (h-Index=65) with an ACPP of 43.81 citations, followed by C.P. Thakur with 3869 citations (h-Index=34) with an ACPP of 50.25 citations.Other than these three most productive authors, P. Das have forth ranked in terms of citation but was ranked eleventh in average citation per paper and H.K. Majumdar ranked tenth in overall publication and ranked sixth on overall citations but ranked fourth on average citation per paper.On the parameter of h-Index A. Dubey ranked forth, however, he was ranked fifth on total citations (Table 4).

Most productive journals publishing Indian Leishmaniasis research
The Indian authored papers were published in 3348 national and international journals. The top three ranked institutions on parameter of h-Index were Banaras Hindu University Varanasi (h-Index=62), Banaras Hindu University Institute of Medical Science Varanasi (h-Index=54) and Indian Institute of Chemical Biology Kolkata (h-Index=49).
The 3391 articles were published by 19788 authors either singly or jointly with authors from national or international institutions.(2015), was most impactful as it was early recognized by the number of citations received in its first year of publication.It was immediately get cited in the year it was published (C 0 =163) and very early rise in citations.The article which get recognition through early citations can be considered as most impactful. [32]Moreover, the most cited article Lozano et al.

CONCLUSION
Leishmaniasis is one of the thirteen Tropical and Neglected Disease identified by WHO.About 98 countries have its etiological impact where Nepal, Bangladesh, India, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Brazil Sudan are most affected region.The agencies are working towards the better health remedies to eradicate the disease from the society.The assessment of research impact helps policy and decision makers to frame

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Comparison of Indian and Global Research Publication.
(2012), was in sleeping state for two years (C 0 =1) with two citations only in first two years of publication and nine citations in third year.Thereafter, it had gained momentum and become most cited article (TC 2017 =4920).

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Citation life of seven most cited articles by Indian authors.

Table 2 : Most productive countries of Leishmaniasis research.
Varanasi, Jawahar Lal Nehru University Delhi and Vardhman Mahavir Medical College New Delhi have one author each.These ten authors have contributed 1304 articles, which was 38.45% share of cumulative total Indian output.Four authors had published more than hundred articles on Leishmaniasis. .Salotra from Vardhman Mahavir Medical College, New Delhi was most impactful with highest number of citations for his 102 publication.P. Salotra had scored a total of 68379 citations at the rate of 670.38 citations per paper.Unlike other Bibliometric measures, the h-index is another very important parameter to account the lifetime achievement of a scholar's work and h-index can give fairer measure of an academic's overall impact. P

Table 5
of 4.856; Forty-Seven articles in Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy (IF 2016 =4.302) and Forty-Two papers in Journal of Biological Chemistry (IF 2016 =4.125).The other high impact factor journals where Indian authors have published their paper were 'New England Journal of Medicine' (IF 2016 =72.406); 'Lancet (IF 2016 =47.831) and 'Nature' (IF 2016 =40.137) Table 4presents the status of ten most productive Indian authors and their citation impact who have published more than one percent of Indian leishmaniasis articles during 1968-2017.It is found that these ten authors were associated with five Indian institutes where Rajendra Medical College and Hospital Patna, Central Drug Research Institute Lucknow and Indian Institute of Chemical Technology Kolkata have two authors and Banaras Hindu University Medical Science

Table 6 )
Most Cited Articles Authored by Indian AuthorsThere were 280 articles which have scored one citations, and rest other more than two.There were six articles, which have received 500 or more citations since their publication until 2017 and can be referred as highly cited articles.These six articles appeared in different national and international journals.Of these six articles, five articles were published in collaboration with international institutions and one published from single Indian institution.Two articles appeared in the 'Lancet' (IF 2016 =47.831) journal and one each in 'Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces' (IF 2016 =3.887); 'Clinical Microbiology Reviews' (IF 2016 =19.958); 'Nature Reviews Microbiology' (IF 2016 =26.819) and 'Lancet Infectious Diseases' (IF 2016 =19.864).Figure 2 presents the status of most cited Indian articles with more than 500 citations.The article by Lozano et al. (2012), scored highest TC 2017 =4920 with an average annual citation rate of 615 citations pear year ranked 1 st .Naghavi et al. (2015) was second highly cited article with TC 2017 of 1744 citations with average annual citation of 581.33 citations.Kumari et al. (2010), was the only highly cited article with Indian affiliation which was cited by 1323 times with average annual citation of 147 citations and was ranked third.Other articles were ranked from forth to sixth.The article Naghavi et al.
Out of 3391 papers published from India, 2936 (86.58%) articles received at least one citation till 2017 (TC 2017 ) during 1968-2017 with sum cumulative total of 69,985 citations.