Abstract
Background: Considering the enormous progress in the field of neuropharmacology and its global importance, as well as the lack of bibliometric studies examining this field as a whole, it is a high time to assess the prevailing topics and citation performances of its research works.Methods: Web of Science (WoS) was searched to identify relevant neuropharmacology articles, which were analyzed with reference to (1) publication year, (2) journal title, (3) total citation count, (4) authorship, (5) WoS category, and (6) manuscript type. The identified manuscripts were analyzed with VOSviewer for further bibliometric parameters, such as citation analysis of institutions, countries/regions, and journals, and to visualize the citation patterns of the terms appearing in the titles and abstracts.Results: The literature search resulted in 43,354 manuscripts. Nearly 98% of them were published since the 1990s. The majority of the manuscripts were original articles (n = 31,360) and reviews (n = 11,266). The top five WoS categories associated with the analyzed manuscripts were Pharmacology/Pharmacy (n = 14,892, 34.3%), Neurosciences (n = 11,747, 27.1%), Clinical Neurology (n = 4,981, 11.5%), Psychiatry (n = 4,464, 10.3%), and Biochemistry/Molecular Biology (n = 4,337, 10.0%). Seven of the top ten most prolific institutions were located in the USA, and one each in Canada, Italy, and the UK, respectively. Manuscripts mentioning certain molecules or pharmaceuticals had high citations per manuscript, such as those reporting about anandamide, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), L-glutamate, clozapine, and curcumin. These terms with at least 50 citations per manuscript were mostly related to cannabis and anti-psychotic drugs, with some dealing with anti-epilepsy effects and Alzheimer's disease.Conclusion: We have identified and analyzed all neuropharmacology articles published since the 1990s. Importantly, the area of neuropharmacology research has been growing steadily due to the global trend in population aging and associated with this continuously increasing number of patients with neuropsychiatric disorders worldwide. It is hoped that identification of new pharmaceutically useful molecules or new clinical applications will continue in the future, in order to improve clinical outcomes and to further strengthen the field of neuropharmacology, a research area cross-linking basic and clinical sciences.
Highlights
Neuroscience is a multidisciplinary scientific study of the nervous system, and especially its major organ, the brain
It is worth mentioning that in the last decade the high publication rate of scientific literature on the field of neuropsychiatry correlates with the increased burden of neuropsychiatric disorders on society (Agarwal and Searls, 2009)
We strongly believe that it is important to further research on new neuropharmacology therapies for these neuropsychiatric disorders since a previous study has reported a startling 0.4% overall success rate of 413 clinical trials on Alzheimer’s disease (AD) conducted during 2002–2012 (Cummings et al, 2014)
Summary
Neuroscience (or neurobiology) is a multidisciplinary scientific study of the nervous system, and especially its major organ, the brain. As a result of the global trend in population aging, the number of patients with AD, PD, and related dementias is projected to double over the 20 years (Tzvetkov and Atanasov, 2018) These neuropsychiatric disorders represent a significant socioeconomic burden on society, and they have been heavily investigated and cited in the last few decades (Yeung et al, 2017a,c). It is worth mentioning that in the last decade the high publication rate of scientific literature on the field of neuropsychiatry correlates with the increased burden of neuropsychiatric disorders on society (Agarwal and Searls, 2009) It seems that in recent years many leading pharmaceutical companies have reduced their investment in early drug discovery related to neuropsychiatric disorders (Trist et al, 2014). Considering the enormous progress in the field of neuropharmacology and its global importance, as well as the lack of bibliometric studies examining this field as a whole, it is a high time to assess the prevailing topics and citation performances of its research works
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