Scientometric analysis of methanol intoxication literature: Global publication output between 1980 and 2019 Scientometric analysis of methanol intoxication

ABSTRACT

Aim: Scientometrics refers to the analysis of scientific literature related to a certain field. Even though the number of publications on methyl alcohol poisoning has recently increased, there has been no bibliometric or scientometric analysis conducted to date. In 2020 in particular, cases of methyl alcohol poisoning have increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is expected to draw greater attention to this field. Material and Methods: All data used in this study were collected from four databases accessed via the Web of Science. All studies published between 1980 and 2019 identified by searching for the keywords "methanol" and "poisoning" were included in the study. The relationship between the number of publications and productivity and characteristics of countries was analyzed with Spearman's correlation test. while GunnMap and VOSviewer were used to create infographics and infomaps. This study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki Results: A total of 744 articles, most of which were original (79.70%), were identified from the four databases accessed via the Web of Science. An analysis of the number of publications by country ranked the United States in the first place, with 174 articles (23.387 %), while the Czech Republic was found to have the most productive researchers. The most popular area was toxicology (20.565%), and Charles University was the most productive institution. It was found that the number of publications and citations did not increase over the years Discussion: The developed countries dominated the literature on methyl alcohol poisoning. It was further observed that articles on methyl alcohol abuse started to appear in 2020 in developing countries, which can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the mistaken belief that it has anti-viral properties. Since the diagnosis and treatment of methyl alcohol poisoning are gaining significance, we recommend that researchers be encouraged to make further studies in this area.