Mapping a Quarter-Century of Scholarship on Paediatric Respiratory Diseases

  1. Dyah Ayu Shinta Lesmanawati
  2. Khalisa Diaz Habibah
  3. Lukman Ade Chandra

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Abstract

Background: Paediatric respiratory diseases remain major causes of childhood morbidity and mortality worldwide, including pneumonia, asthma, bronchiolitis, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection, and environmentally related airway disease. Despite increasing scientific output, comprehensive bibliometric evaluation of this field remains limited. Objective: To analyse the global evolution, leading contributors, collaboration patterns, and emerging themes in paediatric respiratory disease research from 2000 to 2025. Methods: A bibliometric study was conducted using Scopus as the primary database and PubMed as a supplementary source. English-language articles and reviews published between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2025 were included. Bibliometrix/R, VOSviewer, and Gephi were used for performance analysis and science mapping. Outcomes included publication growth, leading countries, institutions, authors, journals, citation metrics, collaboration networks, keyword co-occurrence, thematic evolution, and funding patterns. Results: The dataset comprised 18,742 publications. Research output increased more than eight-fold during the study period, particularly after 2015. The United States remained the leading contributor, followed by China and the United Kingdom. Highly cited publications focused on bronchiolitis guidelines, lung-function standardisation, preschool wheeze, and RSV burden. Four major thematic clusters emerged: asthma and allergy; RSV, bronchiolitis, and pneumonia; cystic fibrosis and chronic suppurative lung disease; and critical care, COVID-19, air pollution, and digital health. Conclusion: Paediatric respiratory research expanded rapidly and became increasingly collaborative and translational. However, research activity remains concentrated in high-income countries despite greater disease burden in low- and middle-income set-tings.

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  1. PREreview

    This Zenodo record is a permanently preserved version of a PREreview. You can view the complete PREreview at https://prereview.org/reviews/22113073.

    This review is the result of a virtual, collaborative live review discussion organized and hosted by PREreview, RCN and AREN on July 16, 2026. The discussion was joined by 48 people: 1 facilitator from the Review and Curate Network, 1 member of the AREN team, and 46 live review participants. We thank all participants who contributed to the discussion and made it possible for us to provide feedback on this preprint.

    Summary

    The goal of this review was to report the global bibliometric landscape of paediatric respiratory disease research between the years 2000 and 2025. The authors focused on which countries, institutions, authors, and journals have made the greatest contributions to paediatric respiratory disease research. The main approach consisted of searching Scopus as the primary database and PubMed as a supplementary source. The authors quantified the increase in the number of articles, identified the most productive and influential countries, institutions, authors, and journals; characterised citation and collaboration structures; mapped thematic clusters and thematic evolution; and examined funding patterns likely to shape the next phase of paediatric respiratory science.

    The main findings of the study include that research output increased more than eight-fold, particularly after 2015, and most of the research came from high income countries, with fewer studies from Africa and Asia. The most frequently studied diseases were asthma and pneumonia, while other diseases received less attention. Most of the articles focused on treatment, but fewer looked at prevention.

    The article presents interesting research questions, with a very high number of articles included in the analysis. However, modifications in the methodology section could improve the robustness of the study, along with some figures describing the study design. A possible weakness of the study is the exclusion of local data or unpublished articles such as preprints, and the omission of other databases such as Web of Science or OpenAlex, with potential underrepresentation of non-English or regional journals. The authors may wish to discuss how database selection could affect the geographical representation of the research landscape.

    List of concerns and feedback

    As a follow-up to the general comments provided above, the reviewers offer the following constructive recommendations to strengthen the manuscript.

    1. Major Concerns

    The authors have, perhaps unintentionally, presented a research landscape that is heavily skewed towards the Global North, despite the stated objective of providing a global bibliometric mapping of paediatric respiratory disease research. The manuscript would be considerably strengthened by including additional bibliographic databases that provide broader coverage of publications from underrepresented regions, particularly low- and middle-income countries, and those indexing non-English language literature. Relying solely on Scopus and PubMed may have resulted in the underrepresentation of important regional evidence and introduced language and publication bias.

    The reviewers are also concerned about the rationale for the temporal categorisation used in the analysis (2000–2008, 2009–2017, and post-2017). The manuscript does not sufficiently justify why these periods were selected. Given the profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on respiratory disease research, the analysis may be more informative if the periods were categorised to reflect the pre-COVID-19, COVID-19, and post-COVID-19 eras, provided that this aligns with the study objectives and available data.

    Furthermore, several descriptions in the text do not correspond clearly with the tables and figures, while some findings are discussed without accompanying visual presentation. This inconsistency makes it difficult for readers to fully interpret the results and assess whether all research questions have been adequately addressed.

    The reviewers acknowledge the inclusion of supplementary methods describing the bibliometric analysis. However, the available methodological information is insufficient to ensure reproducibility and independent validation of the study. The manuscript would benefit from a more detailed description of the search strategy, data cleaning procedures, screening process, and analytical workflow. In particular, the inclusion of a flow diagram illustrating the identification, screening, eligibility assessment, and inclusion of records would substantially improve methodological transparency.

    2. Minor Concerns

    The reviewers noted that preprints were excluded from the analysis; however, the eligibility criteria do not clearly explain the rationale for this decision. The inclusion and exclusion criteria should explicitly justify whether preprints were considered and, if not, why they were excluded.

    The results are generally well organised and follow the stated study objectives. However, the presentation of tables could be improved. The reviewers recommend removing unnecessary table borders where permitted by the journal style and ensuring that all tables fully comply with the journal's formatting requirements. Additionally, where possible, key tables should be embedded within the main manuscript rather than requiring readers to access them separately.

    The study addresses a highly relevant topic for both research and clinical practice in paediatric respiratory diseases. Nevertheless, from an Open Science perspective, the reviewers encourage the authors to consider extending this work in a future version or complementary study by incorporating additional databases that better capture African, non-English language, and other under-represented literature. Such an approach would provide a more inclusive and representative assessment of the global research landscape.

    Finally, to enhance transparency and reproducibility, the reviewers encourage the authors to make the bibliometric metadata, search strategies, analytical workflows, and any relevant code or supporting materials openly available in a trusted public repository, where feasible.

    Concluding remarks

    We thank the authors of the preprint for posting their work openly for feedback. We also thank all participants of the Live Review call for their time and for engaging in the lively discussion that generated this review.

    Competing interests

    Roseline Dzekem Dine was a facilitator of this call and one of the organizers. No other competing interests were declared by the reviewers.

    Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    The authors declare that they did not use generative AI to come up with new ideas for their review.

  2. Version published to 10.20944/preprints202605.1610.v1