A Bibliometric Analysis of Publications on Oxycodone from 1998 to 2017

BACKGROUND: Oxycodone is a widely used opioid analgesic, which is involved in cancer pain and non-cancer pain. This study is intended to understand the publication characteristics of oxycodone research field and assess the quality of pertinent articles from 1998 to 2017. METHODS: Oxycodone-related publications from 1998 to 2017 were retrieved from the Web of Science (WOS) and PubMed database. These papers were coded across several categories, such as total number, journals, countries, institutions, authors and citations reports. And the analysis of co-occurrence keywords was handled by VOSviewer software. RESULTS: According to search strategies, a total of 2659 articles on oxycodone were published in world from 1998 to 2017 in WOS. Among the top 10 most productive organizations, six of them were American institutes, two of them were pharmaceutical enterprises and the other three were Finnish, Australian and Canadian institutes, which is similar with the distribution by country/region. Drewes AM from Denmark published most articles and PAIN MEDICINE is the most productive journal in oxycodone area. Meanwhile, clinical studies occupy a dominant position during the past 20 years. The 10 most cited papers were listed. Among these articles, 8 of them are reviews and 2 of those are meta-analysis. And the last decade (2008–2017) displayed that the newest keywords focus on “double-blind”, “randomized controlled trial” and “neuropathic pain”. CONCLUSIONS: The findings provided a comprehensive overview of oxycodone research. In view of the adverse effects of oxycodone, high-quality oxycodone studies both in basic studies and clinical trials need to be completed.