Advances in Pharmacology-related scientific Publications Worldwide

Abstract

Introduction: Pharmacology comprises all aspects related to the action of drugs, their origin, effect, preparation, properties, actions at the molecular level, among others. Publications in this area are of interest to the scientific community in order to see the current situation and infer future developments.

Objective: To evaluate the scientific production on pharmacology in the last 25 years in the world, based on the information reported by the scientometric portals Scimago Journal and Country Rank, Dimensions and WoS.

Methods: This research is classified as descriptive and comparative over time. The information was extracted between 1996 and 2020. The response variables were number of documents published, number of documents cited and self-cited, and H index. The control variables were region and years of evaluation. Multivariate analysis of variance with canonical contrast and Network analysis were used.

Results: Significant statistical differences were found between regions, with North America leading in the number of publications and citations in the field of pharmacology, followed by Western Europe and Asia. Africa, Latin America, the Pacific region and the Arab countries are the geographical areas with the lowest scientific production. A noticeable growth in scientific progress in the area of pharmacology in the last decade is apparent.

Conclusions: The number of publications and citations in the area of pharmacology has increased over time worldwide. There is a large gap between regions with high purchasing power and those in the developing world in terms of the number of articles related to the different topics in pharmacology. The USA, China, UK, India and Japan are the nations with the highest incidence. Brazil is the only Latin American country that stands out in the Scopus ranking.