Knowledge Dissemination by the Naturopathic Profession: A Bibliometric Analysis of Naturopath-Authored,Peer-Reviewed Publications

Abstract

Objectives:

This study aims to describe the characteristics of published peer-reviewed journal articles authored by naturopathic practitioners (NPs)

Design:

The study used bibliometric analysis of data extracted from journal articles.

Settings/Location:

International

Subjects:

Articles were included if they had at least one author with a naturopathic qualification and were published in a peer-reviewed, indexed journal.

Data collection:

A snowballing method was used between June 2018 and July 2019 to identify relevant articles.

Outcome measures:

Data related to geography, affiliation, year of publication, article type or research design, article topic, and journal were extracted from each included article.

Results:

Identified articles (n = 2,218) were published by NP from 22 countries between 1987 and 2019, with 80.9% published in the last 10 years. Most articles were published by NP from the America (52.5%) and Western Pacific (28.3%) World Health Organization regions. The most common type of study design or article type was reviews and meta-analyses (23.2%) and clinical trials or intervention studies (19.4%). Explicit mention of naturopathy was reported in 8.1% of articles. Almost half (48.4%) of all included articles were published in 40 journals, and 56.9% of these were published in journals ranked in the first quartile of at least one subject area. Articles focused on mental health were more likely to be conducted in Australia (odds ratio [OR] 3.3) and focused on lifestyle behavior (OR 2.5) or clinical nutrition (OR 1.6). Articles about cancer or cancer-related conditions were more likely to include lifestyle behavior (OR 2.0) and less likely to be conducted in Australia (OR 0.1) or Germany (OR 0.5).

Conclusions:

The international naturopathy research community has produced peer-reviewed literature for over 30 years and has demonstrated sustained commitment to codifying existing knowledge, generating new knowledge, and disseminating this knowledge to the wider clinical and research community.