Bibliometric and visual analysis of vaccination hesitancy research from 2013 to 2022

Abstract

Although vaccination is regarded as one of the most significant achievements of public health, there also exists the phenomenon of vaccination hesitancy which refers to delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccination despite availability of vaccination services. In this study, we conducted a bibliometric analysis to provide a comprehensive overview of vaccination hesitancy research from 2013 to 2022. All related publications were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection Database. Information on annual publications, countries, organizations, journals, authors, keywords, and documents was analyzed adopting the bibliometix R-package, VOSviewer, and CiteSpace software. A total of 4042 publications were enrolled. The annual publications increased slightly before 2020 but had an extremely dramatic increase from 2020 to 2022. The United States contributed the most articles and had the greatest collaboration with other countries and organizations. The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine was the most active institution. Vaccine was the most cited and influential journal while Vaccines was the most productive journal. It was Dube E who was the most productive authors with the highest h-index. The most frequent keywords were “vaccine hesitancy,” “COVID-19,” “SARS-CoV2,” “immunization,” “attitudes,” and “willingness.” Vaccination hesitancy to some extent hinders the achievement of global public health. The influencing factors vary across time, space, and vaccines. The COVID-19 pandemic and the development of COVID-19 vaccines have made this issue the focus of interest. The complexity and specific contexts of influencing factors of vaccination hesitancy require further study and will potentially be the focus of future research direction.

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