This dataset contains the data underlying the study Bringing public attention to disease into global health priority-setting. The study maps diseases from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2023 classification across three dimensions, namely epidemiological burden, public attention and research effort, for the period 2016 to 2023. Burden is measured through disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) retrieved from the GBD 2023 release. Public attention is measured through monthly Wikipedia pageviews, restricted to human traffic, across all language editions. Research effort is measured through publications indexed in OpenAlex under the corresponding MeSH descriptors as a major topic. The deposit includes the manual mapping that links each GBD cause to MeSH descriptors and Wikipedia articles, the raw indicator files retrieved from each source, and the aggregated datasets used in the analysis. All processing scripts are available at
github.com.
Contents
matching_2023.xlsx
The core mapping of the study, produced manually and validated against external sources. The sheet Classification holds the four-level GBD 2023 hierarchy of 333 causes, after excluding injury-related causes. The sheet Mapping links each cause to its MeSH descriptors, with qualifiers where applicable, and to its primary Wikipedia article. In total, 236 specific diseases are matched, of which 129 belong to level 3 and 107 to level 4.
Raw_data.zip
Source data retrieved from each of the three dimensions, together with the lookup tables derived from the mapping.
gbd_all_dalys_1423.csv - Global DALYs by cause and year.
gbd_all_dalys_countries_1623_1.csv and gbd_all_dalys_countries_1623_2.csv - DALYs by cause, country and year, for the 25 countries where the selected Wikipedia languages hold official or national status.
mesh_papers.csv and mesh_papers_with_q.csv - Publications indexed under each MeSH descriptor as a major topic, without and with qualifiers, extracted from OpenAlex.
openalex_countries.csv - Country of the first author affiliation for each publication.
wiki_pageviews_user.tsv - Monthly pageviews by Wikipedia article and language edition.
level_3_MESH.tsv and level_3_Wikipedia.tsv - Lookup tables linking each specific disease to its MeSH descriptors and to its Wikipedia article.
Aggregated_data.zip
Analytical datasets built from the files above. Each record reports publication counts, pageviews and DALYs for the period 2016 to 2023.
results_final_lv2.tsv - The 19 GBD level-2 disease groups.
results_final_lv3.tsv - The 158 GBD level-3 diseases, of which 138 have complete data across the three dimensions.
results_final_lv2_year.tsv - Level-2 disease groups broken down by publication year.
results_final_lv2_country.tsv and results_final_lv3_country.tsv - Levels 2 and 3 disaggregated by language edition. Fourteen editions are included, of which German, Persian, Swahili and Vietnamese are analysed in the article.