Abstract
Background Migration and health are key priorities in
global health and essential for protecting and promoting
the health of migrants. To better understand the existing
evidence on migration health, it is critical to map the
research publication activity and evidence on the health
of migrants and mobile populations. This paper presents
a search strategy protocol for a bibliometric analysis
of scientific articles on global migration health (GMH),
leveraging the expertise of a global network of researchers
and academics. The protocol aims to facilitate the mapping
of research and evidence on the health of international
migrants and their families, including studies on human
mobility across international borders.
Methods A systematic search strategy using Scopus will
be developed to map scientific articles on GMH. The search
strategy will build upon a previous bibliometric study and
will have two main search components: (1) ‘international
migrant population’, covering specific movements across
international borders, and (2) ‘health’. The final search
strategy will be implemented to determine the final set
of articles to be screened for the bibliometric analysis.
Title and abstract screening will exclude irrelevant articles
and classify the relevant articles according to predefined
themes and subthemes. A combination of the following
approaches will be used in screening: applying full
automation (ie, DistillerSR’s machine learning tool) and/or
semiautomation (ie, EndNote, MS Excel) tools, and manual
screening. The relevant articles will be analysed using MS
Excel, Biblioshiny and VOSviewer, which creates a visual
mapping of the research publication activity around GMH.
This protocol is developed in collaboration with academic
researchers and policymakers from the Global South, and
a network of migration health and research experts, with
guidance from a bibliometrics expert.
Ethics and dissemination The protocol will use publicly
available data and will not directly involve human
participants; an ethics review will not be required. The
findings from the bibliometric analysis (and other research
that can potentially arise from the protocol) will be
disseminated through academic publications, conferences
and collaboration with relevant stakeholders to inform