Purpose: There is a lack of data concerning
the evaluation of scientific research productivity in paracetamol poisoning
from the world. The purposes of this study were to analyse the worldwide
research output related to paracetamol poisoning and to examine the authorship
pattern and the citations retrieved from the Scopus database for over a decade.
Methods: Data were searched for documents with specific words
regarding paracetamol poisoning as ‘keywords’ in the title or/and abstract.
Scientific output was evaluated based on a methodology developed and used in
other bibliometric studies. Research productivity was adjusted to the national
population and nominal gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.
Results: There were 1721 publications that met the criteria
during study period from the world. All retrieved documents were published from
72 countries. The largest number of articles related to paracetamol poisoning
was from the United States (US; 30.39%), followed by India (10.75%) and the
United Kingdom (UK; 9.36%). The total number of citations at the time of data
analysis was 21,109, with an average of 12.3 citations per each documents and
median (interquartile range) of 4 (1–14). The h-index of the retrieved
documents was 57. After adjusting for economy and population power, India
(124.2), Nigeria (18.6) and the US (10.5) had the highest research
productivity. Countries with large economies, such as the UK, Australia, Japan,
China and France, tended to rank relatively low after adjustment for GDP over
the entire study period.
Conclusion: Our study demonstrates evidence that research
productivity related to paracetamol poisoning has increased rapidly during the
recent years. The US obviously dominated in research productivity. However,
certain smaller country such as Nigeria has high scientific output relative to
their population size and GDP. A highly noticeable increase in the
contributions of Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions to scientific literature
related to paracetamol poisoning was also observed.