AUTHOR=Robert Claude , Wilson Concepción Shimizu TITLE=Thirty-year survey of bibliometrics used in the research literature of pain: Analysis, evolution, and pitfalls JOURNAL=Frontiers in Pain Research VOLUME=4 YEAR=2023 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/pain-research/articles/10.3389/fpain.2023.1071453 DOI=10.3389/fpain.2023.1071453 ISSN=2673-561X ABSTRACT=

During the last decades, the emergence of Bibliometrics and the progress in Pain research have led to a proliferation of bibliometric studies on the medical and scientific literature of pain (B/P). This study charts the evolution of the B/P literature published during the last 30 years. Using various searching techniques, 189 B/P studies published from 1993 to August 2022 were collected for analysis—half were published since 2018. Most of the selected B/P publications use classic bibliometric analysis of Pain in toto, while some focus on specific types of Pain with Headache/Migraine, Low Back Pain, Chronic Pain, and Cancer Pain dominating. Each study is characterized by the origin (geographical, economical, institutional, …) and the medical/scientific context over a specified time span to provide a detailed landscape of the Pain research literature. Some B/P studies have been developed to pinpoint difficulties in appropriately identifying the Pain literature or to highlight some general publishing pitfalls. Having observed that most of the recent B/P studies have integrated newly emergent software visualization tools (SVTs), we found an increase of anomalies and suggest that readers exercise caution when interpreting results in the B/P literature details.