Trends in scientific literature on atypical antipsychotics in South Korea: a bibliometric study

We have carried out a bibliometric study on the scientific publications in relation to atypical or second-generation antipsychotic drugs (SGAs) in South Korea.

With the EMBASE and MEDLINE databases, we selected those publications made in South Korea whose title included the descriptors atypic(*) (atypical(*)) antipsychotic(*), second-generation antipsychotic(*), clozapine, risperidone, olanzapine, ziprasidone, quetiapine, sertindole, aripiprazole, paliperidone, amisulpride, zotepine, asenapine, iloperidone, lurasidone, perospirone and blonanserin. We applied some bibliometric indicators of paper production and dispersion with Price's law and Bradford's law, respectively. We also calculated the participation index (PI) of the different countries, and correlated the bibliometric data with some social and health data from Korea (such as total per capita expenditure on health and gross domestic expenditure on research and development).

We collected 326 original papers published between 1993 and 2011. Our results state fulfilment of fulfilled Price's law, with scientific production on SGAs showing exponential growth (correlation coefficient r=0.8978, as against an r=0.8149 after linear adjustment). The most widely studied drugs were risperidone (91 papers), aripiprazole (77), olanzapine (53), and clozapine (43). Division into Bradford zones yielded a nucleus occupied by the Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry (36 articles). A total of 86 different journals were published, with 4 of the first 10 used journals having an impact factor being greater than 4.

The publications on SGAs in South Korea have undergone exponential growth over the studied period, without evidence of reaching a saturation point.