A bibliometric analysis of scientific production on atypical antipsychotic drugs from Italy.

Objective: A bibliometric study of peer-reviewed scientific publications on atypical antipsychotic drugs (AADs) from Italy is herein presented.

Methods: We selected the documents from Scopus database. We applied several bibliometric indicators of production and dispersion, including Price’s Law about the increase of scientific literature, and Bradford’s Law. We also calculated the participation index across different countries. The bibliometric data have also been correlated with some social and health data sourcing in Italy, such as total per capita expenditure on health and gross domestic expenditure.

Results: A total of 2949 original documents were published within the period 1972-2015. Our results state fulfilment of Price’s Law, with scientific production showing exponential growth (r=0.901, as against an r=0.838 after linear adjustment). The drugs most widely studied were clozapine (257 documents), risperidone (179), and olanzapine (172). Stratification into Bradford zones yielded a nucleus represented by the Journal of Clinical Psychopharmacology and Rivista di Psichiatria (58 articles, each one). A total of 1091 different journals were evaluated.

Conclusions: The publications on AADs in Italy have undergone exponential growth over the studied period, which is in line with the progressively burgeoning on novel AAD releases. No evidence of saturation point was observed.