Evolutionary Analysis of International Scientific Output in Occupational Therapy from 1917 to 2020

Maria Cristina Espinosa-Sempere, Virtudes Pérez-Jover, Jose A. Quesada, Adriana López-Pineda and Concepción Carratalá-Munuera
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Maria Cristina Espinosa-Sempere: Pathology and Surgery Department, Miguel Hernandez University, 03550 San Juan de Alicante, Spain
Virtudes Pérez-Jover: Health Psychology Department, Miguel Hernandez University, 03202 Elche, Spain
Jose A. Quesada: Clinical Medicine Department, Miguel Hernandez University, 03550 San Juan de Alicante, Spain
Adriana López-Pineda: Clinical Medicine Department, Miguel Hernandez University, 03550 San Juan de Alicante, Spain
Concepción Carratalá-Munuera: Clinical Medicine Department, Miguel Hernandez University, 03550 San Juan de Alicante, Spain

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 23, 1-16

Abstract: Published evidence on the progress of occupational therapy research from a broad perspective is limited. The purpose of this study was to analyze the international research productivity on occupational therapy from 1917 to 2020. This was a bibliometric study including articles indexed on MEDLINE, Scopus, and CINAHL. The literature search was conducted in June 2021 using the descriptor “occupational therapy” and the term “Ergotherap*”, and was limited to citable documents. Price’s law and Bradford’s law were applied to analyze a number of bibliometric indicators. Research on occupational therapy had an average annual growth rate of 26.4% and followed an exponential model. The top producing countries were the USA (21.52%) and the UK (6.07%). There is a high transience index of 74.81%. The top producing author was Kielhofner, G. ( n = 132). Studies with the highest reported scientific evidence accounted for 1.13% ( n = 638) of the total number of publications. More randomized controlled trials are necessary to increase the quality of the evidence base. Moreover, a greater collaboration between authors is needed for the professionalization of this research field.

Keywords: bibliographic research; scientometrics; health occupations; MEDLINE (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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