The Bibliometric Literature on Scopus and WoS: The Medicine and Environmental Sciences Categories as Case of Study.

In a broad sense, science can be understood as the knowledge contained in scientific manuscripts published in scientific journals. Scientific databases index only those journals that reach certain quality standards. Therefore, research and dissemination of scientific knowledge are essential activities for the growth of science itself. The aim of this manuscript is to assess the situation of medicine and environmental sciences among the bibliometric literature and to put it in perspective with the overall bibliometric publications in all scientific fields. The main countries publishing bibliometric manuscripts are China, USA and Spain. The latter country is ranked three out of the top five institutions according to the Scopus and WoS databases. In both databases, the average scientific collaboration of the top 20 institutions offers the same result, 41%. According to Scopus, the main subject categories in which this research falls are social sciences (38%), computer science (26%) and medicine (23%), while the environmental sciences category has 8%. In the analysis of the Medicine category alone, it has been observed that 136 countries have contributions in this field. The main countries are the United States, China and the United Kingdom. In the field of medicine, the main areas studied were: Epidemiology, Pediatrics, Orthopedics, Cardiology, Neurosurgery, Radiology, Ophthalmology, Oncology, Plastic Surgery and Psychiatry. With respect to environmental sciences, less international dissemination has been found, with only 83 countries having worked in this field. The main ones are China, Spain and the United States. Regarding the top 10 institutions, it can be stated that only Spain and China are relevant. Spain focuses on sustainability and China on the environment. The result of an independent keyword analysis of all published bibliometric manuscripts has shown that the main clusters are: Mapping Science (29%), Research Productivity (23%), Medicine (20%), Environmental Sciences (12%), Psychology (7%), Nursing (6%) and Engineering (4%). In short, medicine and environmental sciences are the most relevant areas in the field of bibliometrics after social sciences and computer sciences.

Bibliometric Studies and Worldwide Research Trends on Global Health.

Global health, conceived as a discipline, aims to train, research and respond to problems of a transboundary nature in order to improve health and health equity at the global level. The current worldwide situation is ruled by globalization, and therefore the concept of global health involves not only health-related issues but also those related to the environment and climate change. Therefore, in this Special Issue, the problems related to global health have been addressed from a bibliometric approach in four main areas: environmental issues, diseases, health, education and society.

Worldwide Research Trends on Medicinal Plants.

The use of medicinal plants has been done since ancient times and may even be considered the origin of modern medicine. Compounds of plant origin have been and still are an important source of compounds for drugs. In this study a bibliometric study of all the works indexed in the Scopus database until 2019 has been carried out, analyzing more than 100,000 publications. On the one hand, the main countries, institutions and authors researching this topic have been identified, as well as their evolution over time. On the other hand, the links between the authors, the countries and the topics under research have been analyzed through the detection of communities. The last two periods, from 2009 to 2014 and from 2015 to 2019, have been examined in terms of research topics. It has been observed that the areas of study or clusters have been reduced, those of the last period being those engaged in unclassified drug, traditional medicine, cancer, in vivo study-antidiabetic activity, and animals-anti-inflammatory activity. In summary, it has been observed that the trend in global research is focused more on the search for new medicines or active compounds rather than on the cultivation or domestication of plant species with this demonstrated potential.