Whose shoulders is health research standing on? Determining the key actors and contents of the prevailing biomedical research agenda

Background Conflicts of interest in biomedical research can influence results and drive agendas away from public health priorities. Previous agenda-setting studies share two shortfalls: they only account for direct connections between academic institutions firms, as well potential bias based on researchers’ personal beliefs. This paper’s goal is to determine the key actors contents prevailing sciences (HBMS) agenda, overcoming these shortfalls. Methods We performed a bibliometric lexical analysis 95,415 scientific articles published 1999 2018 highest impact factor journals within HBMS, using Web Science database CorText platform. HBMS’s knowledge network was proxied with maps where nodes represent affiliations edges most frequent co-authorships. The content HBMS agenda depicted through prevalent multi-terms found titles, keywords, abstracts. Results large private firms leading are intertwined. mostly molecular biology (40% multi-terms), an inclination towards cancer cardiovascular (15 8% multi-terms, respectively). Studies pathogens biological vectors related recent epidemics marginal (1% multi-terms). Content prioritizes pharmacological intervention over socio-environmental factors influencing disease onset or progression overlooks, among others, study infectious diseases. Conclusions Pharmaceutical corporations contribute set which mainly focused few diseases topics. A more balanced together epistemological approaches that consider associated spreading, could being better prepared prevent treat diverse pathologies improve overall outcomes.