A bibliometric analysis of scientific research on atypical antipsychotic drugs in India during 1998-2013

Abstract

Background: We carried out a bibliometric study on the scientific publications on atypical antipsychotic drugs (AADs) from India. Methods: Using the EMBASE and MEDLINE databases, we performed the selection of documents produced in India. We applied bibliometric indicators of production and dispersion, namely Price’s law on the increase of scientific literature and Bradford’s law, respectively. We also calculated the participation index (PI) of different countries. The bibliometric data have also been correlated with relevant social and health data from India (including total per capita expenditure on health and gross domestic expenditure on research and development). Results: In this study, we identified 639 original documents published between 1998 and 2013 from India. Our results indicated fulfilment of Price’s law (correlation coefficient r = 0.9619 after exponential adjustment vs. r = 0.9382 after linear adjustment). The most widely studied AADs were olanzapine (173 documents), clozapine (117), risperidone (100) and quetiapine (65). Publications appeared in 221 different journals, with only 4 of the top 10 journals having an impact factor greater than 2. Division into Bradford zones yielded a nucleus occupied by the Indian Journal of Psychiatry (53 articles). It is remarkable that the 27.38% of the production is devoted to “medical/pharmaceutical chemistry” field. India has the largest ratio PI AAD / PI Psychiatry and Neurology in the world’s 12 most productive countries in biomedicine and health sciences. Conclusions: The publications on AADs in India have undergone exponential growth over the studied period, without evidence of reaching a saturation point.