Worldwide research on fear of childbirth: A bibliometric analysis

OBJECTIVE: To review the research on fear of childbirth, analyze and evaluate the publications by means of bibliometric analysis, and provide suggestions and scopes for future study. DATA SOURCES: Web of Science, PubMed, Embase and the Cochrane Library databases. STUDY SELECTION: All published articles focusing on the fear of childbirth from inception to February 10, 2020. DATA EXTRACTION: A total of 743 articles were included for final analysis. Bibliographic data were exported from databases and then cleaned manually before using Microsoft Excel and VOSviewer to analyze and visualize the findings. DATA SYNTHESIS: It was found that 743 articles have been cited 31515 times (h-index: 98). The volume of publications increased by 29.3 times in the past two decades. Across the globe, Sweden was the most prolific country having 129 articles (17.4%) with six of its institutions in the top ten most prolific institutions in the world. Fifty-two (7.8%) documents were published in Midwifery journal. The most prolific author was Hildingsson, who published 35 articles (4.7%). “Cesarean section,” “experience,” and “factor” were the words that appeared most frequently in titles and abstracts of studies. “Point prevalence of psychiatric disorders during the second trimester of pregnancy: A population-based study” was the most cited article and received 525 citations. CONCLUSION: There is an increasing interest in the research in fear of childbirth during the past two decades. This study has demonstrated that the Swedish authors have a leading role on this topic. Researchers especially in countries with high birth rates, need to promote research projects in this field as it is an important public health issue.