Characteristic Features of the Top 100 Cited Studies on Herbal Medicine: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Background: Plants play vital role in human life. Herbal plants have been used for the treatment of several ailments over the years. The aim of the study is to provide an overview and research trend of 100 top-cited studies on herbal plants.

Methods: A comprehensive search of publications on herbal plants was conducted in the Web of Science Core Collection database on April 05, 2021. HistCite^TM and VOSviewer software were used for citations and visualization mapping respectively.

Results: The top 100 studies authored by 453 authors and published in 70 journals were included in the final analysis. Majority of the retrieved documents were based on articles (56%). The most dominant authors were Ernst E (n=8, 8%) and Chan K (5%). The most active institute was University of Exeter (8%). The top leading Journal in herbal medicines was Journal of Ethnopharmacology (11%). Most hotspot words used in our study was Herbal (100%) and Medicine (52%). Moreover, visualization mapping represents that herbal medicine was the most co-occurrence (15 occurrences) author keyword. The most productive country was People’s Republic of China (31%).

Conclusion: This study provides basic information about the published literature on herbal plants. Most of the herbal medicines have been used in developing countries. But now this trend is shifting towards developed nations.