INTRODUCTION: Respiratory disease remains one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity worldwide. OBJECTIVES: In this study, we aimed to compare the quantity and quality of scientific publications in the field of respirology from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and China. METHODS: Articles published in 58 respiratory journals from 2007 to 2017 were screened with Science Citation Index Expanded database. The number of total and annual articles, article types, impact factor (IF), h-index, citations and articles in the high-impact journals from the corresponding country were collected for quantity and quality comparisons. The correlation of socioeconomic factors and annual publications was also analysed. RESULTS: A total of 93078 articles were published worldwide in respiratory journals from 2007 to 2017. The United States contributed the largest proportion (34399 (37.0%)), followed by the United Kingdom (9494 (10.2%)), Germany (6918 (7.4%)) and Canada (6574 (7.1%)). Publications from China represented the 6th, but this quantity is rapidly increasing. The United States occupies the dominant place in all kinds of article types under investigation in the study, except in the category of meta-analysis. For total and average citations, China still lags behind the other 4 countries in the study. The annual numbers of articles from China, Canada and the United States were positively correlated with gross domestic product (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The United States has played predominant role in respiratory research for the last 11 years. Although China has made great progress in the number of published articles over the past decade, the quality of these publications needs further improvement.