Trends in the Study of Medicinal Plants Around the World Abstract

2. Methods and Materials
This work's data were obtained by querying the Scopus database, which has been utilized successfully in numerous bibliometric studies. The Scopus API, whose methodology has been developed in previous works, was required to download the data because of the large number of results. The following query was used in this study: TITLE-ABS-KEY(“medic*plant*”)).The examination of the scientific networks, both concerning catchphrases and the connection between creators or between countries was finished with the SW VosViewer .


Methodology.


3 Results
3.1. Global Evolution Trend
From 1960 to 2019, more than 110,000 studies related to medicinal plants have been published. Overall, it can be said that there was a continuous increase from 1960 to 2001, with just over 1300 published studies. From here, the trend increases faster until 2011, when it reaches a maximum of just over 6200 publications. After this period, publications stabilize at just over 5000 per year.


Worldwide temporal evolution of medical plants publications


3.2. Global Subject Category
Analyzing the results according to the published categories (see Figure 3), the Scopus database shows that most were performed across pharmacology, toxicology, and pharmacy categories at 27.1%. Other categories of relative importance are Medicine (23.8%), Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology (16.7%), Agriculture and Life Sciences (11%), Chemistry (8.7%), Immunology and microbiology (2.5%), the environment. Science (2.1%) and Chemical Engineering (1.5%). All other categories are less than 1%. Example: Nursing, Interdisciplinary or Engineering.

Scopus-indexed publications on medicinal plants organized by scientific categories

3.3. Countries' Distribution of Publications
A total of 159 nations have published on this topic when the obtained results are analyzed country by country. Although their most cited works are related to antioxidant activity—both for China and for India—and in this last country also antidiabetic potential, it is observed that China and India stand out from the rest of the countries with more than 10,000 publications. This may have been influenced by traditional medicine .The United States of America comes in third, followed by Brazil, which has more than 5000 publications. Antioxidant and antimicrobial activity, as well as anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial activity, are the topics of the most frequently cited publications from these nations.
As previously stated, the list of countries includes those with more than 2000 publications: Germany, Iran, South Korea, Japan, Pakistan, Italy, France, and the United Kingdom. For this list of nations with more than 2000 publications, if the overall results are analyzed in their evolution over time. There are three distinct groups of nations at this point.

International research into medicinal plants.

Medical plant publications from the top 12 nations' perspectives over time
The first group includes China and India, the research leaders, who publish between 800 and 1100 times per year. The research was led by China from 1996 to 2010, then by India from this year to 2016, after which it was led by China again. In the final year of the study, the following five nations make up the second group: Pakistan, Brazil, Iran, the United States, South Korea. With a publication rate of between 200 and 400 per year, this group of nations has experienced sustained growth over time. It is important to note that Iran holds the third position after Brazil did so for a decade, from 2007 to 2016.The following five nations make up the third group: Germany, the United Kingdom, Japan, Italy, and France .They are maintaining a steady number of publications—around one hundred per year—with a slight upward trend.

if the publication categories used in the country-by-country analysis are taken into account. They might appear to have a similar distribution at first glance. However, Brazil leads the Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Pharmaceutics category in terms of relative importance, with 35% of its own publications, followed by India with 33%.China leads the Medicine category in relative terms with 29 percent, followed by Germany with 27 percent. This ranking of nations always places biochemistry, genetics, and molecular biology in second or third place. Japan, South Korea, and France stand out with 23% and 22%, respectively, in this category. Agricultural and Biological Sciences is the fourth category for many nations. Pakistan stands out with 20%, followed by Italy with 16%, and so on. With 20% and 14%, Japan and Iran rank in the fourth category, respectively, for the subject of chemistry. Other categories include: In all countries, the percentage of people working in chemical engineering, immunology and microbiology, environmental science, engineering, or multidisciplinary fields is less than 5%.

Distribution by countries, according to scientific categories
These findings demonstrate that, in comparison to Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Pharmaceutics, Medicine, or Biochemistry, Genetics, and Molecular Biology, the category of Agricultural and Biological Sciences has little relevance for medicinal plants.