A bibliometric analysis of anemia research in children or adolescents in the last 10 years: Advances, challenges, and perspectives

INTRODUCTION: Both nationally and internationally, anemia is one of the greatest public health challenges. It mainly affects children, adolescents, and women of reproductive age and manifests itself in different etiological forms. To examine the worldwide scientific production on anemia in children and adolescents focusing on the Scopus database, in a period between 2011 and 2020, the present bibliometric study is proposed. METHODOLOGY: The Scopus database was used as the main data source to collect relevant manuscripts on anemia in children and adolescents from 2011 to 2020. The CSV data were exported to SciVal for analysis of most published topics, collaborations, most published institutions, productivity by journal category, most published journals, most published medical specialties, and most published authors. RESULTS: Of the 1784 manuscripts reported, it was shown that the year 2020 had the highest number of publications with 33, 19, 13, and 15 articles in the Q1 (top 25%), Q2 (top 26%-50%), Q3 (top 51%-75%), and Q4 quartiles (76%-100%), respectively. The University of Pennsylvania (USA), Johns Hopkins University (USA), and Baylor College of Medicine (USA) were the top three institutions with the highest article production. The top three places were for Pediatric Blood and Cancer, Public Health Nutrition, and Journal of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology with 20, 12, and 11 publications, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: In recent years, there has been evidence of an increase in the number of publications referring to anemia in children and adolescents, experiencing a notorious increase from 2015. In terms of scientific production, the United States, Egypt, and Canada are positioned as the leading countries in this field.