Alternative medicines worth researching? Citation analyses of acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, and osteopathy 1996-2017.

ABSTRACT: Some complementary and alternative medicines (CAM) are frequently criticised for being based on faith rather than scientific evidence. Despite this, researchers, academic departments, and institutes teach and investigate them. This article assesses whether the scholarship produced by four CAMs is valued by the academic community in terms of citations, and whether the level of citations received might be detrimental to academic authors' careers. Based on an analysis of acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, and osteopathy journal articles indexed in Scopus 1996-2020, the results show that the prevalence of the four areas vary substantially internationally, with acupuncture eclipsing the others in East Asia but homeopathy being more common in India and Brazil. The main broad fields publishin

SUBMITTER: Thelwall M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8414961 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature