부산대학교 도서관

Background: Substances present in nature have been a continuous source for the developmentof drugs for cardiovascular and infectious diseases, cancer, and many other diseases. Asthe literature concerning these natural products grows, it becomes more difficult for a reader toquickly grasp the essential facts and develop a well-informed impression of this field of research.Until now, it has also been difficult to determine which natural products and research objectiveswere gaining the most attention as measured by a number of citations. Objective: The current study of all published articles concerned with natural products sought toidentify which natural products and which research objectives are connected with the major contributorsto scientific journals based on the number of relevant publications and the number of timeseach publication was cited elsewhere. Methods: Bibliometric data, including citation data, were extracted from the Web of Sciencedatabase using the search string TS=(“natural product*)” and analyzed by the VOSviewer software. Results: The search yielded 63,194 articles, with more than half of the manuscripts published since2012. The ratio of original articles to reviews was 5.8:1. The major contributing countries were theUnited States, China, Germany, Japan, and India. Articles were published mainly in journals focusedon chemistry, pharmacology or biochemistry. Curcumin, resveratrol, and terpenoids were themost frequently cited natural products. Conclusion: The results of the current study provide researchers from different backgrounds andhealthcare professionals with a brief overview of the major trends in natural-product research in theform of a citation-based summary of the relevant literature.