Health research in the state of Odisha, India: a 10-year bibliometric analysis (2011-2021)

Background: Bibliometric analyses are an important tool for evaluating health research outputs in terms of their distribution, trends, actors, focus, and funding sources. The transition from Millennium to sustainable development goals have led to a gradual shift in health policy and possibly the research priorities of low-income settings in the Empowered Action Group (EAG) states, lagging in socio-economic and health parameters, also ranking low on innovations and research. This study was aimed to describe the recent trends, quantity, type, focus and sources of health-related research in the EAG state of Odisha, India.Materials and Methods: Peer reviewed published original research articles which were related to human health, published between 1st Jan 2011 and 31st Dec 2020 and where the study population were residents of Odisha, or study site was in Odisha, exclusively or partially were analyzed. Publication characteristics were tabulated, including title, journal name, open access, date of publication, number of authors, designation of the authors, number of institutes involved, name of institute of first author. Details of study setting, study site, ethical clearance, funding source were also collected.Results: The study identified 2285 articles from database searches and included 666 articles after screening for the bibliometric analysis. Most of the manuscripts had between 3-6 authors (43.5%). Two institutes from the state, ICMR-RMRC and KIIT, together contributed to over 22.4% of the published manuscripts as lead authors. Nearly 45.9% studies were community based while 45.3% were hospital based. While most of the published work was on infectious diseases, the proportion came down with time between 2011 and 2020. An overwhelming majority of studies were observational in nature and less than 10% were experimental in design. Conclusions: The analysis shows a substantial increase in the number of publications in this decade. Priority setting of health care problems, increased funding and capacity building can give a much-necessitated impetus to more quality and evidence-based research for aiding policy implementation and improvement of overall health of Odisha.