Invisible health participation research networks in the americas: bibliometric analysis of informal collaborations

Abstract

Studies on participation in health are based on different theoretical and methodological approaches and dialogue with different contexts and local problems, producing formal and informal collaboration networks that contribute to the development of the theme. This article analyzes informal collaboration networks on the topic of participation in health through the analysis of citations in common by authors who have published on the topic. To this end, a bibliometric analysis of articles in English, Spanish and Portuguese was carried out based on searches carried out in VHL, PubMed, SCOPUS, WOS and SciELO, consolidating a database with 641 references. With the help of the VOSviewer software, we analyzed patterns of bibliographic coupling and co-citation of references. Bibliographic coupling represents the indirect interaction between pairs of documents, authors, organizations or countries in a given area of research and occurs when two of the aforementioned subjects share at least one bibliographic reference in their publications and the co-citation comprises the frequency in which two authors are mentioned. cited concomitantly in a work. The analysis offers an overview of what has been studied and applied in the field of health in terms of participatory methodologies, which points to the importance of comparisons and syntheses at an international level to renew research fronts and practices related to participation in health.