Assessing global, regional, national and sub-national capacity for public health research: a bibliometric analysis of the Web of Science(TM) in 1996-2010.

Background: The past two decades have seen a large increase in investment in global public health research. There is a need for increased coordination and accountability, particularly in understanding where funding is being allocated and who has capacity to perform research. In this paper, we aim to assess global, regional, national and sub-national capacity for public health research and how it is changing over time in different parts of the world.