Research progress on rabies and its zoonotic implication during the 21st century: a bibliometric analysis.

Rabies is a fatal viral disease of global concern owing to its economic and zoonotic importance. Bibliometric analysis is an essential tool for assessing articles and other publications in literature. In this study, we performed a comprehensive analysis of global trends research on rabies in the 21st century. By 1st of May 2025, the data were collected from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC). VOSviewer software was used to present the network among studies for each item under study, with an emphasis on the top-ten outcomes for each item. Co-occurrence analysis, citation analysis, and bibliographic coupling were performed. In total, 12,404 articles were included in the bibliometric analysis. Results revealed that author Rupprecht C. was the most productive author (340, 2.74%), and the publications in 2021 (770, 6.2%) were at the forefront. The United States Department of Health Human Services was the top funding agency (999, 8.05%) and the USA was the top nation in publications (3870, 31.19%). The highest publications in WoS categories were collected from Veterinary Sciences (2399, 19.34%). Research articles were the most abundant form (9240, 74.5%). Citation indicated that the paper by Hampson et al. (2015) was the most cited paper with a total citation of 1260 and an average citation of 105 per year. The findings of this bibliometric analysis can be used to determine the potential future for the prevention and control of rabies, as they show an increasing number of studies on rabies in animals and humans, which is indicative of its alarming resurgence.