Assessing Homeopathy Research Productivity
An-Ming Wang1*, Shih-Kai Lin1, Hsiang-Chung Liu1, Yee-Shuan Lee2 and Yuh-Shan Ho1#
1School of Public Health, Taipei Medical University
2Bibliometric Centre, Taipei Medical University - Wan-Fang Hospital
Introduction
Alternative or complementary medicine is on the rise around the world. The basic notions of
alternative medicine are different from those of current scientific medicine. Homeopathy,
derived from Greek words homeo (similar) and pathos (suffering), is one of the often used
alternative medical systems in the world. It is based on three principles: like cures like,
minimal dose and single remedy (The Burton Goldberg Group, 1993). In another word, cures
are given by similar characteristics with minimal dosage of a single substance. It was first
described by Samuel Hahnemann (1755 - 1843) who was a physician, chemist, linguist,
historian of medicine and scientific revolutionary. In this study, a quantitative analysis was
done on homeopathy related publications during the time span of 1991 to 2002.
Table 1. Publication output, citation frequency,
CPP and RCR of top 10 publishing countries
Methodology
The data for this study were based on Science Citation Index (SCI) database on the Institute
for Scientific Information (ISI), Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A. “Homeopathy or Homeopathic” were
used as the keywords to search as a part of the title, abstract or keyword.
Results and Discussion
The number of papers published by different countries in the 1991-2002 period and their
percentage share is shown in Table 1. The U.K. is the leader, followed by Germany, the
U.S.A., France, India, Switzerland, Canada, Netherlands and Italy. The low productivity of
Japan is somewhat unexpected as it is one of the seven major industrial countries (G7).
Countries with Relative Citation Rate (RCR) value higher than 1 indicated they had more
impact than the average of this field. Figure 1 clearly showed the citation per publication
(CPP) and the production trend.
Country
UK
Germany
USA
France
India
Switzerland
Canada
Netherlands
Italy
Austria
Others
P
160
144
130
31
29
25
18
17
13
12
243
P%
19.5
17.5
15.8
3.77
3.53
3.04
2.19
2.07
1.58
1.46
29.6
C
1009
454
1508
60
9
58
145
337
40
25
115
CPP
6.31
3.15
11.6
1.94
0.31
2.32
8.06
19.8
3.08
2.08
29.3
RCR
1.36
0.678
2.49
0.416
0.0667
0.499
1.73
4.26
0.661
0.448
6.30
P: Publication, C: Times cited, CPP: citation
per publication, RCR: Relative citation rate
P%
Review
C%
Article
80
Biographical-Item
60
40
Note
Book Review
20
80
8
60
6
40
4
20
2
2001
1999
1997
1995
1993
0
1991
0
Year
Figure 1. Annual publication output and CPP
450
P
CPP
400
20
350
300
15
250
200
10
150
100
5
50
0
Ciitation per publication, CPP
10
P
CPP
Number of publication, P
Publication, P
100
Citation per publication, CPP
A total of 1085 papers were published in 333 SCI indexed journals from 37 countries during
0
the time span from 1991 to 2002 concerning homeopathy (Figure 1). Over 74% of the papers News Item
Correction
were published in English with Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Polish,
Russian and Spanish accounted for the remaining share. UK has dominated the production
Correction,
Meeting Abstract
Addition
share and other top 10 counties were list in Table 1. 53.5% of the papers were in the form of
Letter
Editorial Material
articles. This distribution was much lower that other research field.
Publication and CPP of various
500
25
120
12
document types
0
-
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 20
Number of author
Publication output and CPP of various
number of authors
Conclusion
0
29
32 25
1
20
28
P%
C%
2
3
15
26
4
10
24
5
5
22
6
0
20
7
18
8
17
9
16
10
15
14
12
11
13
Publication and citation of various
page counts
 The yearly production has grown twice more than a decade ago where 50% were single-authored.
 UK, USA and Germany have produced more than 50% of total output where European countries have also contributed 50% of the total
share.

English remain the dominant language, but it only composed 74% where German contributed 20% and remaining were distributed
among 8 European languages.
 “Eisenberg, D.M., Davis, R.B., Ettner, S.L., Appel, S., Wilkey, S., van Rompay, M. and Kessler, R.C. (1998), Trends in alternative
medicine use in the United States, 1990-1997 - Results of a follow-up national survey. JAMA-Journal of the American Medical
Association, 280 (18), 1569-1575.” is the most cited paper with 824 times cited.
References
 The Burton Goldberg Group (1993), Alternative Medicine, The Definitive Guide, Future Medicine Publishing, Washington, USA.