https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7944-0102
Dear Editor,
We read with interest the comments from Mungmunpuntipantip and Wiwanitkit.Citation1 in response to our paper on the bibliometric and visual analysis of vaccination hesitancy research.Citation2 We sincerely appreciated the authors’ interest and their comments regarding the potential benefits of our study in enhancing the understanding of the research environment surrounding vaccination hesitancy.
The authors raised the concern regarding the reliance on a single database, the Web of Science Core Collection, for obtaining literature related to vaccination hesitancy. This is actually a limitation of our study. As explained in our study, despite the high reliability and broad representation of the selected Web of Science Core Collection database, it would be better to combine other databases for data analysis. However, we failed to merge other databases such as PubMed and Scopus into analysis due to the constraints of the bibliometric software.
We agree that vaccination reluctance is a dynamic field with ongoing advancements and research that may extend beyond the years 2013 to 2022. Considering a relatively smaller number of publications before 2013, we conducted the study in 2022 to present the analysis of vaccination hesitancy research and demonstrate the current research status in the latest 10 years. In the future, we will consider extending the time frame of our study or conducting periodic updates to provide a more up-to-date assessment of the research landscape.
The author provided the comments on our lacking qualitative examinations of the included publications in our study. Actually, unlike other methods used in meta-analysis and review papers, bibliometric analysis is an integrating method to analyze distribution structure, change patterns, quantitative relationship and quantitative literature processing in a field. It aims to provide valuable insights into research activities and identify significant publications and research hotspots that have made notable academic contributions rather than to assess the quality of data reported in papers. We understand the importance of quality assessment in scientific research, and we appreciate the concern for this aspect. However, we believe that our study makes some contributions to the literature on vaccine hesitancy by identifying trends and patterns in research activities that can inform future research and policy efforts. In future work, we may complement our bibliometric analysis with a thorough qualitative examination of the included papers according to the suggestions from the authors.
In conclusion, we highly appreciated the comments on our research. As suggested, future research may concentrate on the identification and resolution of the underlying factors contributing to vaccination resistance. It is crucial to explore and evaluate viable strategies to address vaccine hesitancy in diverse situations.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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References
- Mungmunpuntipantip R, Wiwanitkit V. Comment on bibliometric and visual analysis of vaccination hesitancy research. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2023;19(2):2238575. doi:10.1080/21645515.2023.2238575.
- Chen C, Yang Q, Tian H, Jinyao W, Chen L, Zeqi J, Zheng D, Chen Y, Zhiyang L, Hai L. Bibliometric and visual analysis of vaccination hesitancy research from 2013 to 2022. Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2023;19:2. doi:10.1080/21645515.2023.2226584.