Curcuma Longa (Medicinal Plant) Research: A Scientometric Assessment of Global Publications Output with Reference to Web of Science

Abstract

The present study explores the characteristics of publication records for a total duration of twenty years, from 2000 to 2019, in the field of Curcuma longa research. This study has been carried out based on the multidisciplinary bibliographic database available with the Web of Science in Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and its implications, using the means of scientometrics research techniques. In order to make this analysis a holistic and comprehensive survey of the research trends in the chosen field, the following variables are taken into account: growth rate; global citation scores; distribution of publications by journals, conferences and institutions; favored media of communication; Hirsch index and citation profile of top institutions, countries and authors; contribution of funding agencies; high number of cited papers and characteristics of their bibliographic details. The total number of publication records has been found out to be 6087 during the study period. These 6087 publications have received 171 h-index, 1, 84,715 global citations score and 30.34 average citations. On the whole, 6087 records were published during the study period (2000-2019) in 18 types of documents from 107 countries with 2005 journals, contributed by as many as 20855 authors affiliated to 4879 institutions. These publications were brought out in 18 languages, and they received 1, 56,986 cited references. Majority of the records were in the form of journal articles, reviews, papers in conference proceedings and meeting abstracts, accounting for 97 percent of the total publications. Naturally enough, English happens to be the leading language of 98.8 percent to have accounted for the most number of publications. The four largest contributing countries in the total literature on Curcuma longa during the entire study period are India (24.68 percent), USA (17.7 percent), China (12.2 percent) and Iran (6.09 percent) respectively. The largest institutional contributor of publication records happens to be the Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran with 1.8 percent of the papers to its credit. The most prolific authors to have published more number of research documents during the study period were Sahebkar A (73 papers), Aggarwal BB (67 papers), Nayak S (35 papers) and Kumar A (33 papers). The journal of “Food chemistry” Elsevier ltd tops the list of journals with maximum number of publication records in the field for the given study period with 70 publications, followed by “Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry” American Chemical Society (69 papers), “Phytotherapy Research” John Wiley and sons Ltd (63 papers) and “PLOS One” Public Library of Science (59 papers). While the Third World Congress on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants - WOCMAP III held in February 2003 at Thailand resulted in the publication of 6 papers, the following three major funding agencies contributed immensely to the research activities in the field: ‘National Natural Science Foundation of China’ with 318papers, United States Department of Health & Human Services, USA with 304 papers and Council of Scientific Industrial Research, India with 99 papers.