Aloe Vera (Medicinal Plant) Research: A Scientometric Assessment of Global Publications Output during 2007-16

The paper examines 1988 global publications on Aloe Vera research, as covered in Scopus database during 2007-16. The Aloe Vera research registered 3.91% growth and averaged its citation impact to 9.57 citations per paper. The top 12 most productive countries individually contributed global share 5.36% to 52.17%. India accounted for the largest global publication share (32.55%), followed by USA (11.52%), Iran (8.15%), China (4.63%) etc. Together, the top 12 countries accounted for 79.18% global publications share and 84.94% global citation share during 2007-16. Seven of top 12 countries scored relative citation index above the world average i.e. 1.04: U.K. (1.82), Thailand and USA (1.63 each), Spain (1.23), Pakistan and China (1.15 each) and Italy (1.12) during 2007-16. The country share of international collaborative publications across top 12 most productive countries varied from 5.36% to 52.17%, in Aloe Vera research during 2007-16. Medicine, among other subjects, accounted for the highest publications share (40.90%), followed by pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics (35.16%), agricultural and biological sciences (23.09%), biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology (20.27%), chemistry (7.90%), immunology and microbiology (6.24%) and engineering (5.38) during 2007-16. The top 20 most productive research organizations and the authors collectively contributed 11.47% and 8.55% respectively global publication share and 12.87% and13.82% respectively global citation share during 2007-16. The journals medium accounted for the largest 79.08% global share with top 15 journals accounting for just 16.01% of total output that was reported in journals during 2007-16. Only 18 papers in Aloe Vera research registered 100 plus citations between 104 to 242 citations per paper, and together these papers cumulated 2656 citations, averaging to 147.55 citations per paper. These 18 highly cited papers involved the participation of 66 authors and 41 organizations and were published in 15 journals.