Bibliometric study of scientific research on optometric visual therapy

PURPOSE: To analyze scientific research in the field of visual therapy through a bibliometric study. METHODS: The database used in this bibliometric study was SCOPUS, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, covering scientific journals, books, and conference proceedings. Using remote downloading techniques, articles published between 1946 and 2017 were selected by entering the main descriptors: "optometric vis* training", "optometric vis* therapy", "vis* therapy", "vis* training" limited to the title, key words and/or abstract. We applied the following bibliometric indicators: Price’s index, doubling time and annual growth rate, Price’s transience index, Lotka’s Law, h factor, and Bradford’s zones. RESULTS: The authors retrieved 294 original articles from the temporal interval 1946–2017 (articles, reviews, letters to the director, etc.), discarding 15 of them for not meeting the study requirements. Annual growth rate was 39.62%, the timeframe 1987-1983 containing the most number of documents. United States was the country with the highest production, with more than 60% of the records. The most productive institutions are State University of New York System, SUNY State College of Optometry, and Southern California College of Optometry. Classification of authors based on productivity is strongly concentrated in small producers, with a transient index of 80.53. The total number of authors was 488, representing a co-authorship index of 1.75. CONCLUSION: Bibliometric studies have become essential tools for assessing scientific publications.