title: Bacterial meningitis: a density-equalizing mapping analysis of the global research architecture.
abstract: Bacterial meningitis is caused by a variety of pathogens and displays an important public health threat all over the world. Despite the necessity to develop customized public health-related research projects, a thorough study of global meningitis research is not present, so far. Therefore, the aim of this study was a combined density-equalizing and scientometric study. To evaluate the scientific efforts of bibliometric methods, density-equalizing algorithms and large-scale data analysis of the Web of Science were applied in the period between 1900 and 2007. From this, 7998 publications on bacterial meningitis have been found. With a number of 2698, most publications have been written by U.S. authors, followed by the UK (912), Germany (749) and France (620). This dominance can also be shown in the international cooperation. The specific citation analyses reveal that the nation with the highest average citation rate (citations per publications) was Norway (26.36), followed by Finland (24.16) and the U.S. (24.06). This study illustrates the architecture of global research on bacterial meningitis and points to the need for customized research programs with a focus on local public health issues in countries with a low development index, but high incidences, to target this global public health problem.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Occupational Medicine, Charité-School of Medicine, Humboldt University Berlin, Thielallee 73, 14195 Berlin, Germany. niklas.pleger@charite.de.
authors.forename: Niklas
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Pleger
authors.affiliation: Institute of Occupational Medicine, Charité-School of Medicine, Humboldt University Berlin, Thielallee 73, 14195 Berlin, Germany. beakloft@gmx.de.
authors.forename: Beatrix
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kloft
authors.affiliation: Institute of Occupational Medicine, Social Medicine and Environmental Medicine, Goethe University Frankfurt, Theodor-Stern-Kai 7, 60590 Frankfurt, Germany. quarcoo@web.de.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Quarcoo
authors.affiliation: Institute of Occupational Medicine, Social Medicine and Environmental Medicine, Goethe University Frankfurt, Theodor-Stern-Kai 7, 60590 Frankfurt, Germany. arbsozmed@uni-frankfurt.de.
authors.forename: Simona
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Zitnik
authors.affiliation: Institute of Occupational Medicine, Social Medicine and Environmental Medicine, Goethe University Frankfurt, Theodor-Stern-Kai 7, 60590 Frankfurt, Germany. mache@med.uni-frankfurt.de.
authors.forename: Stefanie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mache
authors.affiliation: Institute of Occupational Medicine, Social Medicine and Environmental Medicine, Goethe University Frankfurt, Theodor-Stern-Kai 7, 60590 Frankfurt, Germany. klingelhoefer@med.uni-frankfurt.de.
authors.forename: Doris
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Klingelhoefer
authors.affiliation: Institute of Occupational Medicine, Social Medicine and Environmental Medicine, Goethe University Frankfurt, Theodor-Stern-Kai 7, 60590 Frankfurt, Germany. occup-med@uni-frankfurt.de.
authors.forename: David A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Groneberg
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D014943:Global Health; D006801:Humans; D007391:International Cooperation; D016920:Meningitis, Bacterial / Q000453:epidemiology*