Reviewer response for version 1
This article attempts to assess the bibliographic status of Babesia parasites with the declared objective of identifying research priorities in order to achieve effective prevention and control of babesiosis. 
The authors have produced publication data from various sources showing trends over the years and also by citation, author, institute and country.
Unfortunately the article has major deficiencies. 
The most obvious of these is that the human and animal versions of the disease have been conflated so that the data are more or less meaningless. 
The economic impact, research priorities and research constraints are very different in veterinary compared with medical babesiosis. 
In fact it is possible to argue that even the parasites are different, since the vast majority of human cases are caused by a parasite ( Babesia microti ) that is only distantly related to those prevalent in veterinary babesiosis ( Babesia sensu stricto), and there are differences in their biology such as presence or absence of transovarial transmission, sensitivity to antibabesials, availability of in vitro cultures etc.
Additionally, it is difficult to see the point of counting numbers of articles published by different countries, authors, institutions etc. 
Cross comparison of these data is invidious since different interests and time scales are involved. 
Such data may tell the reader something about where there has been sufficient interest for research funding but nothing about the nature of the research, which is necessary to identify areas of neglect. 
It would have been much more useful to break the data down by topic. 
For example, how many articles are in the area of pure immunological research, usually involving rodents, how many address therapeutic issues, how many vaccination, how many epidemiology etc. 
Only then would it be possible to see where the gaps are, particularly in relation to practical measures, particularly if accompanied by analytical comments. 
The superficial approach of this article certainly does not, especially when there has been no attempt to explain the trends presented in the figures.
The authors have identified some research areas that require more attention, for example blood transfusion infection in the USA, development of vaccines (presumably molecular), development of new antibabesials, but have not provided the necessary context or evidence for these conclusions.
Some important issues that the authors seem to have ignored completely, include the development and successful use of live vaccines for cattle babesiosis over a long period of time, the prodigious, but failed efforts, to produce molecular vaccines against cattle babesiosis (which indicates the very great difficulty involved in the development of vaccines for human use), the change in direction and emphasis of babesiosis research in general with the discovery of B. microti in the US, and epidemiological issues such as the extension of the geographical range of infections, although briefly touched on in relation to the UK, for reasons that are not clear.
The references make little mention of established authorities in the topic and there are at least five instances of self-citation. 
Finally there are many examples of poor sentence construction (e.g. the last part of the last sentence in the abstract, inaccurate statements (e.g. the first sentence in the Introduction and the first sentence in the second paragraph), unnecessary sentences (e.g. the third sentence in the second paragraph) etc. 
There are more of all these in the Discussion.
Overall, the impression gained is that the authors have made use of readily available metrics on the internet, to present data that appear to have no useful meaning and have not attempted to analyze the data to achieve their stated objectives.
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