Scopus based bibliometric and scientometric analysis of occupational therapy publications from 2001 to 2020

Abstract

Background: Occupational therapy (OT) is one of the allied health professions, with its first journals in 1920. The main objective of this study was to find out the publication trend in the field of OT research for the period of 2001-2020 using the principles of bibliometrics and scientometrics. Methods: The data was retrieved from Scopus from the past 20 years (2001-2020). VOSviewer software was used to find year-wise publications in OT-specific and non-OT-specific Journals along with top journals, countries, organisations, authors, cited articles, and highly used keywords. Results: There was a steady growth of OT articles over the past 20 years. Scopus indexes 16 OT-specific journals are identified. American Journal of Occupational Therapy, British Journal of Occupational Therapy Journal, Australian Occupational Therapy Journal, Scandinavian Journal of Occupational Therapy, and Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy are the leading publications and citations. A comparison of OT-specific and non-OT journals inferred that the OT-specific papers are three times more published in non-OT journals. There is a trend in publishing multidisciplinary medical journals than OT journals. The US publishes the most articles, followed by the UK, Australia, Canada, and Germany. Though the US alone produced a considerable number of articles (9517), only five organisations are listed in the top 20, compared to Canada (n=6) and Australia (n=5). Australia represents the highest number of published authors (n=11/20). Canada represents a highly cited author from the top-cited publications. The five common keywords used by OT-authors are "occupational therapy", “rehabilitation”, “stroke”, “physical therapy,” and “activities of daily living”. This study lists top-20 journals along with their CiteScore and Journal Impact Factor. Conclusions: This study will help the budding researchers in OT to select a suitable quality journal for publication and, further, helpful for research promotion, researcher incentivising, grant allocations, and policymakers in the OT field.