The Italian contribution to pediatric sleep medicine: A scientometric analysis

We conducted the first scientometric analysis to quantitatively assess the scientific contribution of re-searchers from Italian institutions in the field of pediatric sleep medicine. We searched Science Citation Index Expanded from Web of Science (WOS) Science Citation up to November 3rd, 2022. Bibliometrix R packages (3.1.4) and CiteSpace (6.0.R2) were used to extract and analyze co-citation reference networks, co-occurring keyword networks, co-authorship network, co-cited institutions, and co-cited journals. We retrieved a total of 2499 documents, published between 1975 and 2022. Co-cited reference networks showed four main clusters of highly cited topics: evidence synthesis of publications on sleep disorders in children and adolescents, sleep and neurological disorders, non-pharmacological treatments of sleep disturbances, and sleep and Covid-19 in youth. Co-occurring keyword networks showed an earlier focus on the neurophysiology of sleep/neurological disorders, followed by a trend on the association of sleep disturbances to neurodevelopmental disorders and behavioral aspects. Co-authorship network showed that Italian researchers in the field of pediatric sleep medicine tend to be highly collaborative interna-tionally. Overall, Italian researchers have provided a crucial contribution to pediatric sleep medicine across a number of specific topics, spanning from neurophysiology to treatment, and from neurological to behavioral/psychopathological aspects.(c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Automated summary

We conducted a scientometric analysis to assess the scientific contribution of Italian researchers in the field of pediatric sleep medicine. Using bibliometric analysis, we examined co-citation reference networks, co-occurring keyword networks, and co-authorship networks. The results showed that Italian researchers have made significant contributions to various topics in pediatric sleep medicine, including sleep disorders, neurological disorders, and non-pharmacological treatments.