HIV-1 genetic diversity a challenge for AIDS vaccine development: a retrospective bibliometric analysis

ABSTRACT

Background

Despite recent advances in human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) prevention, a fast, safe, and effective vaccine will probably be necessary to end the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This study was conducted to evaluate global research trends and map the key bibliometric indices in HIV-1 genetic diversity from 1998 to 2021.

Methods

A comprehensive online search was conducted in the Web of Science Core Collection database to retrieve published literature on HIV-1 genetic diversity. Key bibliometric indicators were calculated and evaluated using HistCite^TM, Bibliometrix: An R-tool, and VOSviewer software for windows.

Results

A total of 2,060 documents written by 9,201 authors and published in 250 journals were included in the final analysis. Year 2012 was the most productive year with 121 (5.87%) publications. The most prolific author was Shao Yiming (n = 74, 3.59%) from Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The United States of America was the highly contributing and influential country (n = 681, 33.05%). AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses was the most productive journal (n = 562, 27.2%). Network visualization shows that HIV-1 was the most widely used author keyword.

Conclusion

This study provides global research trends and detailed information on HIV-1 genetic diversity. The amount of scientific literature on HIV-1 genetic diversity research has rapidly increased in the last two decades. The maximum number of articles on HIV-1 genetic diversity was published in developed countries; therefore, a scientific research collaboration among researchers and institutes in low-income countries should be promoted and supported.

KEYWORDS:

• HIV-1
• genetic diversity
• vaccine
• bibliometric analysis
• Web of Science Core Collection

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge Nankai University and Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention CDC for providing online access to the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contributions

All the authors potentially contributed and met the authorship criteria.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science and Technology Major Project of China [grant number: 2018ZX10731-101], Science Priority [Grant 2019SKLID602] from the State Key Laboratory of Infections Disease Prevention and Control, National Natural Science Foundation International/Inter-Organization Cooperation and Exchange Study-NSFC-VR Project (China and Switzerland) [grant number 81861138011].