A global bibliometric study and visualisation of hantavirus research : 1980 to 2020

Background
Over the past few decades, hantavirus research has changed on a global scale. However, there aren’t many studies in this area of bibliometric analysis. To better understand the development and potential future hotspots of this subject, we intend to evaluate and illustrate the research foci and trends of this topic using bibliometric analysis.

The hantavirus illnesses have demonstrated certain novel epidemic characteristics with the recent rapid growth in globalisation and global warming. Hantavirus infection rates have increased significantly overall, and because there are so many novel genotypes being discovered, there is a real possibility that this illness may pose a threat to global public health.

To lay a foundation for future research in this area, the current study intends to examine the focal points and development trends of hantaviruses and hantavirus infections over the last 40 years and to depict knowledge structure using VOSviewer and CiteSpace.

Materials and procedures
To produce trend analysis, publications about hantavirus investigations were selected from the Web of Science Core Collection. The papers and reviews were once again extracted, and VOSviewer and CiteSpace were used to visually assess the countries, organisations, authors, references, and keywords in this field.

Data Gathering
In addition to titles, authors, institutions of the authors, countries and regions of the authors, keywords, and publication years that can be used for bibliometric analysis of publications, the Web of Science Core Collection was a database that in particular included the information of references that is not included in other databases.

Data visualisation and analysis of maps
For visual analysis, all reliable data from the Web of Science Core Collection were imported into Microsoft Excel 2019, VOSviewer, CiteSpace, and ArcGIS.

The Center for Science and Technology Research at Leiden University created the bibliometric network analysis tool VOSviewer. Based on bibliometric data, it can be used to create network maps of academic publications, journals, nations, authors, and keywords.

CiteSpace
Professor Chen Chaomei created the bibliometric citation visualisation programme known as CiteSpace. It focuses on the examination of the possible scientific knowledge found in the research literature and gradually employs data mining and information analysis to visualise the research emphasis, assess the scientific field’s underlying assumptions, and predict research trends.

Results
There were a total of 4408 research included, and hantavirus publications dramatically increased each year. To conduct a bibliometric study, 3,716,016 research papers and reviews were retrieved. These papers mostly originate from 3312 institutions led by the University of Helsinki and 125 nations, including China and the United States. The authors who were identified totalled 12,529, with Vaheri A being the most significant. The journal with the most studies and citations was the Journal of Virology. Following analysis, the most prevalent terms and emerging fields were rodents, hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, hantavirus cardiopulmonary syndrome, nephropathy epidemic and related genotypes, and clinical symptoms.

An overview of global publication output trends
The quantity of papers that are published over time illustrates the patterns of this field’s research. Between 1980 and 2020, the WOS core database had 4408 publications on hantaviruses, which were found using our search. Before 1993, there were fewer than 100 publications each year, and this number gradually grew. After 1994, there was a sharp rise in the number of papers per year, indicating that academics had started to pay attention to the hantavirus sector. Since 2010, there have been over 100 annual releases, with a great deal of variation between years since 2000. In 2014, there were 234 annual publications, which was the most.

Conclusion
Hantavirus research is booming right now. In the future, there has to be more cooperation in this area across many nations and agencies. Current and emerging research fields include the ecology and clinical manifestations of novel genotypes, vaccine development, and variables affecting host population density and distribution.