Mapping the global landscape of in vitro antioxidant assays for natural product research: A bibliometric perspective

In vitro antioxidant assays (IVAA) are effective tools for evaluating the antioxidant properties of natural products, which are thought to contribute to their medicinal effects. However, the landscape of global interest in this topic has not been thoroughly examined. This study is the first to evaluate the bibliometric trends on the use of IVAA in natural product research focusing on the publication trends by year and country, top-cited articles, authors, journals, primary subject areas, and co-occurrences of authors' keywords. A total of 2856 Scopus-indexed publications from 1995 to 2024 were analysed using Scopus’s “Analyse Results” feature and VOSviewer v1.6.20 for keyword co-occurrence visualizations. Our findings revealed a steady increase in relevant publications from 2008 to 2024, with English as the dominant language. India and China emerged as the leading countries. Food Chemistry was the top publishing journal. A review article published by the Saudi Pharmaceutical Journal in 2013 was the most cited. Gokhan Zengin from Selcuk University, Turkey, was the topmost influential researcher. Agricultural and Biological Sciences, along with Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Pharmaceutics, were the primary research subjects. Network visualisation identified six keyword clusters, with the red cluster being the most significant, featuring nine keywords including “antioxidant,” “anti-inflammatory,” “antimicrobial” and “phytochemical” among others. Recent impactful keywords include “antidiabetic” and “molecular docking.” Our in-depth analysis illustrated the key aspects of global research trend of IVAA impacting the natural product research. The use of computational tools is encouraged to complement IVAA while global collaborations are expected to promote natural product research.