Investigating Empirical evidence on the Epidemiology, Diagnosis and Bibliometric analysis of the 100 topmost cited publications on Tuberculosis Disease

Tuberculosis (TB) disease remains a growing threat in public health globally. This study explored the epidemiology, diagnosis, management, and bibliometric analysis of the top 100 most cited articles on TB. The study adopted a narrative review and bibliometric analysis to explore publications on TB disease. Publications in the Web of Science were retrieved to provide extensive selection process. The present study of top 100 articles which are mostly cited are reported between 1969 to 2018. Reported documents were published in 37 journals, and a total of 1058 authors contributed with 10.5 authors per document, and 12 countries contributed, with most of TB research originating from the US (N=51) articles. We found 1058 occasional authors, and of these, 971 authors (0.003%) presented only three articles, followed by 11 authors (0.010%) and 18 authors (0.017%), respectively. About (n=34) research was published in General & Internal Medicine and Science & Technology. New England Journal of Medicine with 14 was top journal. The lead research institution was the University of Cape Town. The significant correlations were found between the number of citations and documents per year (r=0.9579, p<0.0001), countries (r=0.9570, p<0.0001), article per journal (r=0.8721, p<0.0001), and authors (r=0.4601, p<0.0001), and documents per Institution (r=0.6159, p<0.0001). A new insight into TB scientific production was through social network. The evidence from this study provides a template for understanding the epidemiology of TB and the trends in research. It also exposes the hotspot of research along with research gaps for future studies.