Characteristics of Bibliometric Analyses of the Complementary, Alternative, and Integrative Medicine Literature: A Scoping Review

Introduction: Research on complementary, alternative, and integrative medicine (CAIM) continues to grow. Bibliometric analyses (BAs) are valuable to assess research trends, identify gaps, and understand the evolution of a body of literature, yet there are no systematic or scoping reviews on how these BAs are conducted. This scoping review aimed to systematically review and summarize BAs on CAIM literature to inform and guide future bibliometric studies in this field and beyond. Methods: A scoping review was conducted in accordance with Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines. A systematic search was conducted in MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, AMED, CINAHL, Scopus, and Web of Science from database inception to the date of the search on January 5, 2023. Eligible articles were BAs of the CAIM literature. Screening and data extraction were completed independently and in duplicate by at least two reviewers, with findings summarized descriptively. Results: The review included 286 articles published between 1995 and 2023, with approximately 75% published in the last 5 years. Studies were conducted in 36 countries, with China (50%) leading in contributions. All articles used performance analysis techniques, whereas 80% also used science-mapping techniques. The most commonly used performance analysis metrics were “total publications” (98%) and “total citations” (67%). Co-word (63%) and co-authorship (55%) analysis were the most common science mapping techniques. VOSviewer and CiteSpace were the predominant visualization softwares employed. Conclusions: This review demonstrates large methodological diversity in the conduct of CAIM bibliometrics. As a result of this variability, future research should focus on developing uniform methodologies and incorporating diverse metrics and alternative data sources to enhance the reliability and reproducibility of BAs in the CAIM field.