Bibliometric analysis of United States and global obstetrical pharmacy literature from 1994 to 2023.

Abstract

Background: Federal research policy in the U.S. changed in the early 1990s to include more pregnant patients in clinical research. However, pregnancy outcomes in the United States have gradually declined over the past few decades. Little research has been conducted to characterize U.S. obstetrical pharmacy publications and compare them with global trends.

Objectives: This study aimed to measure the volume and types of U.S. and non-U.S. obstetrical pharmacy literature over 30 years to characterize research in this specialty. The secondary objectives included measuring trends in authorship and citations and performing a text-mining analysis of obstetrical pharmacy publications.

Methods: This bibliometric analysis used the Web of Science database to identify obstetrical pharmacy documents published between 1994 and 2023 in the United States and non-U.S. countries. Articles were included if they contained obstetrical or pregnancy topics and were within the pharmacy and pharmacology research areas. Data on document types, citations, authors, and common words were collected and analyzed using descriptive statistics.

Results: A total of 12,190 obstetrical pharmacy documents met the inclusion criteria, representing only 2.8% of global obstetrical publications. The United States had the most documents (29.6%), followed by China (10.7%), Italy (5%), the United Kingdom (3.2%), and Canada (3.2%). U.S. and non-U.S. documents increased exponentially (R² = 0.9485 and 0.979, respectively) over the 30 years. Text-mining analysis showed that both groups had common research topics and interests.

Conclusion: Pharmacy documents represent a small proportion of obstetrical publications amidst worsening maternal outcomes in the United States. Despite the exponential growth in obstetrical publication frequency, the overall contribution from the United States is at risk of being superseded by that of China. High international collaboration and citations of U.S. documents may provide opportunities to increase future scientific production in this area and improve patient outcomes.