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Review
. 2019 Feb 14:9:2045125318820207.
doi: 10.1177/2045125318820207. eCollection 2019.

Trends in the scientific literature on atypical antipsychotic drugs in the United Kingdom: a bibliometric study

Francisco López-Muñoz  1 , Derek K Tracy  2 , F Javier Povedano-Montero  3 , Josefien Breedvelt  4 , Javier García-Pacios  5 , Mª Poveda Fernández-Martín  6 , Gabriel Rubio  7 , Cecilio Álamo  8
Affiliations
Review

Trends in the scientific literature on atypical antipsychotic drugs in the United Kingdom: a bibliometric study

Francisco López-Muñoz et al. Ther Adv Psychopharmacol. .

Abstract

Objective: A bibliometric study was undertaken of peer-reviewed publications on atypical antipsychotic drugs (AADs) from the United Kingdom and the findings are presented herein.

Methods: We selected the documents from the Scopus database. We applied several production and dispersion bibliometric indicators, including Price's law on the growth of the scientific literature, and Bradford's law. We also calculated a so-called 'participation index' across different countries. The bibliometric data were thereafter correlated with social and health data from the UK, including total per capita expenditure on health and gross domestic expenditure.

Results: A total of 4156 original manuscripts were published within the timeframe 1967-2015. Our results are in accord with Price's law, with scientific output demonstrating exponential growth (r = 0.9227, as against an r = 0.8766 after adjustment). The drugs most widely evaluated were clozapine (465 documents), olanzapine (263) and risperidone (248). Stratification into Bradford zones produced a nucleus represented by the Journal of Psychopharmacology (168 articles) and British Journal of Psychiatry (159 articles). A total of 1250 different journals were evaluated.

Conclusions: Publications on AADs in the UK have shown exponential growth across the studied period, which is in line with the progressively burgeoning novel AAD releases. No evidence of a saturation point was observed.

Keywords: United Kingdom; atypical antipsychotic drugs; bibliometrics; schizophrenia.

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Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest statement: Dr. Tracy is a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychosis Studies, at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London (KCL), and a visiting senior lecturer at University College London (UCL): he is also on the editorial board of the British Journal of Psychiatry (the BJPsych): KCL, UCL and the BJPsych were favourably noted in this current manuscript’s analysis.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Growth of scientific production on AADs in UK. A linear adjustment of the data was carried out, and a fitting to an exponential curve, in order to check whether production follows Price’s Law of exponential growth. Linear adjustment: y = 5.6514x – 11167 (r² = 0.8766). Exponential adjustment: y = 3E – 93e0.1088x (r² = 0.9227).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Number of documents on AADs (1975–2015).
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Evolution of the number of documents every 5-year periods.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Relationship between production of scientific literature on AADs and total production in the field of psychiatry and neurology in the world’s 11 most productive countries. AAD, atypical antipsychotic drug; PaI, participation index.
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and relationship between production of scientific literature on AADs and the total expenditure on health on GDP and per capita in Int$, in the world’s 10 most productive countries in psychiatry and neurology. AAD, atypical antipsychotic drug; PaI, participation index. *World Bank data. **World Health Organization data.
Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Contribution of different UK institutions.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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