4.2. Search Strategy

The search was car­ried out in October 2020, encompassing the years of 2010 to 2020. The advanced search mode was selected using the title (TI) and abstract (AB) search fields. The search queries used were: [TI = (MeSH)] OR [AB = (MeSH)]. For most of the 22 diseases, two or more Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) Terms were searched as shown in Table 1, including the scientific name of the pathogen and the most common name of the disease. For rabies and HIV/AIDS the Boolean operator was “AND” instead of “OR” to avoid false positive results. Data retrieved from each query was visually validated to prevent false positive results as a consequence of multiple meanings of the terms. Only English search terms were used because, in general, terms in other languages such as Spanish or Portuguese do not significantly increase the results.

Additionally, to determine the most frequent terms in the last 500 publications included under the topic [TS = neglected tropical diseases] a bibliometric map was elaborated using the VOSviewer software v. 1.6.15 (https://www.vosviewer.com (accessed on 15 January 2021)).