The emergence of alternative medicine as a new field: a bibliometric study of a
rapidly - growing field
Moshe Yitzhaki & Tzipi Shahar
Department of Information Studies
Bar-Ilan University, Israel
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
Abstract
The field of alternative medicine has undergone a significant transformation in
recent decades. From a marginal and disregarded subject it has seemingly
emerged into a large and widely-recognized field, undergoing a process of
growing consolidation with the conventional medical-scientific establishment.
Consequently, a growing number of articles, dealing with various aspects of
alternative medicine, have appeared in scientific and professional
publications.
The purpose of this study was to bibliometrically assess the growth of the
literature dealing with alternative medicine, during the recent twenty years
(1975-1994), as reflected in the conventional medical and scientific
bibliographical databases used by the medical profession.
An on-line search, not limited to English-language publications, conducted on
eighteen databases specializing in medical and scientific fields, retrieved
close to 4000 publications, mostly articles, of which (80%) appeared between
1985 and 1994. This demonstrates the rapid growth which occurred in the number
of publications dealing with alternative medicine throughout the twenty years
period checked. This growth was accompanied by a parallel increase in the
number of different keywords used in the process of indexing these
publications. Most of these publications appeared in two countries : the US and
the UK, whose combined share has increased from 44% in 1975-1979 to 70% in
1989-1994, with a recent considerable shift in favor of the US. About 87% were
published in only eight 'top' countries out of the fifty found in the study.
Caution is needed, however, when drawing conclusions concerning the accurate
situation world-wide, since findings are probably strongly biased in favor of
the western countries and the English language, two biases which prevail in the
eighteen databases
Read on.