Does scientific effort reflect global need? A review of infectious disease publications over 100 years.
Epidemiol Infect
; 147: e114, 2019 01.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-30869011
ABSTRACT
In a rational world, scientific effort would reflect society's needs. We tested this hypothesis using the area of infectious diseases, where the research response to emerging threats has obvious potential to save lives through informing interventions such as vaccination and prevention policies. Pathogens continue to evolve, emerge and re-emerge and infectious diseases that were once common become less so or their global distribution changes. A question remains as to whether scientific endeavours can adapt. Here, we identified papers on infectious diseases published in the four highest ranking, health-related journals over the 118 years from 1900. Focussing on outbreak-related and burden of disease-related metrics over the two time periods, 1990 to 2017 and 1900 to 2017, our analyses suggest that there is little underrepresentation of important infectious diseases among top ranked journals. Encouragingly our results suggest the scientific process is largely self-correcting.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Periodicals as Topic
/
Publishing
/
Communicable Disease Control
/
Global Health
/
Communicable Diseases
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Aspects:
Determinantes_sociais_saude
Limits:
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Epidemiol Infect
Journal subject:
DOENCAS TRANSMISSIVEIS
/
EPIDEMIOLOGIA
Year:
2019
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Nueva Zelanda