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. 2021 Feb 22;18(4):2131.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph18042131.

Thirty Years of Human Rights Study in the Web of Science Database (1990-2020)

Priscilla Paola Severo  1 , Leonardo B Furstenau  2 , Michele Kremer Sott  2 , Danielli Cossul  3 , Mariluza Sott Bender  4 , Nicola Luigi Bragazzi  5
Affiliations

Thirty Years of Human Rights Study in the Web of Science Database (1990-2020)

Priscilla Paola Severo et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

The study of human rights (HR) is vital in order to enhance the development of human beings, but this field of study still needs to be better depicted and understood because violations of its core principles still frequently occur worldwide. In this study, our goal was to perform a bibliometric performance and network analysis (BPNA) to investigate the strategic themes, thematic evolution structure, and trends of HR found in the Web of Science (WoS) database from 1990 to June 2020. To do this, we included 25,542 articles in the SciMAT software for bibliometric analysis. The strategic diagram produced shows 23 themes, 12 of which are motor themes, the most important of which are discussed in this article. The thematic evolution structure presented the 21 most relevant themes of the 2011-2020 period. Our findings show that HR research is directly related to health issues, such as mental health, HIV, and reproductive health. We believe that the presented results and HR panorama presented have the potential to be used as a basis on which researchers in future works may enhance their decision making related to this field of study.

Keywords: SciMAT; bibliometric analysis; co-word analysis; human rights; strategic intelligence.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Strategic diagram (a); thematic network structure (b); thematic evolution structure (c).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Number of publications on the topic of human rights over time (1990–June 2020).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Strategic diagram depicting the performance of human rights.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Strategic diagram depicting the performance of human rights research. (a) the cluster ‘mental-health’. (b) the cluster ‘HIV’. (c) the cluster ‘reproductive health. (d) the cluster ‘armed-conflict’. (e) the cluster ‘informed consent. (f) the cluster ‘social-justice’ (g) the cluster ‘freedom of expression’. (h) the cluster ‘political economy’. (i) the cluster ‘children’s rights’ (j) the cluster ‘sustainable development’. (k) the cluster ‘human trafficking’. (l) the cluster ‘LGBT’.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Thematic evolution structure of human rights study from 1990 to June 2020.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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