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A 53-Year Bibliometric and Scientometric Analysis of Research in Culinary and
Medicinal Mushrooms
Article in International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms · June 2020
DOI: 10.1615/IntJMedMushrooms.2020035031
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International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms, 22(6):521 – 534 (2020)
A 53-Year Bibliometric and Scientometric Analysis of
Research in Culinary and Medicinal Mushrooms
Xin Hui Chan,a Vikineswary Sabaratnam,b,c Noorhidawati Abdullah,d & Chia Wei Phana,b,*
a
Department of Pharmaceutical Life Sciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia; bMushroom Research Centre, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; cInstitute of Biological
Science, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; dDepartment of Library Science
& Information, Faculty of Computer Science & Information Technology, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia
*Address all correspondence to: Chia Wei Phan, Department of Pharmaceutical Life Sciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Malaya, 50603
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Tel.: +603-7967 7550, E-mail: phancw@um.edu.my
ABSTRACT: The research field of culinary and medicinal mushrooms has been well developed since the first relevant
publication in 1966. However, to date, there has been no bibliometric analysis published specifically for this field. This
study aimed to assess the most influential publications as well as the research trends and important drivers in the field of
culinary and medicinal mushrooms. Scopus was used to identify relevant publications and the 1000 most-cited publications were identified and analyzed. Bradford’s law of scattering shows one-third of the papers were published in 14 core
journals, with a total of 102 papers published in International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms. There is an insignificant
negative correlation (Pearson’s correlation coefficient, r = –0.355) between the journal impact factor and publication
count. VOSviewer was used to generate a country network. China represents Asia’s research center in this field, having
contributed 20% of the 1000 most-cited publications. A term map was also created to visualize the co-occurrence of key
terms in the domain. Different biological activities such as antioxidant and antitumor properties of mushrooms appeared
to be a recurring topic in this field. Wasser (2003) showed the highest citation count (n = 1282), which is almost double
the second most-cited publication (n = 611). There is a weak positive correlation (r = +0.237) between the years since
publication and total citation count. In conclusion, this bibliometric study will assist researchers to comprehend the current status of the research on culinary and medicinal mushrooms, and to visualize the future impact of such an important
field.
KEY WORDS: bibliometric, scientometric, analysis, Scopus, research, visualization, VOSviewer, culinary and medicinal mushrooms
ABBREVIATIONS: CSV, comma-separated value; DOI, digital object identifier; GDP, gross domestic product; SJR, SCImago
Journal Rank; SNIP, Source Normalized Impact per Paper
I. INTRODUCTION
In the late 1960s, the term bibliometrics was coined by Alan Pritchard. It is defined as “the application of
mathematics and statistical methods to books and other media of communication.”1 Bibliometrics also can
be defined as the quantitative methods used to measure, track, and analyze print/online-based scholarly
literature.2 Bibliometrics analyzes the publication data quantitatively by using author-level, article-level,
and journal-level data to determine the research productivity.3 One of the commonly used bibliometric law
is Bradford’s law of scattering, which was introduced by Bradford in 1934. It describes the distribution and
scattering of literature on a specific subject in the journals.4 It helps in identifying the core journals in a specific field through the arrangement of journals according to their published articles’ impact or productivity.5
Bibliometric analysis is conducted by identifying a collection of literature or a certain volume of data
within a subject area or journal. It requires the use of statistical tools to extract the data and manipulate
it, which is often based on citation or content analysis.6 Bibliometric analysis is widely used as a tool to
assess research productivity and identify the research trends in different research fields.7 Such bibliometric
analyses have been conducted in multiple research fields, such as ethnopharmacology8 and parasitology.9
1521-9437/20/$35.00 © 2020 by Begell House, Inc. www.begellhouse.com521
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Chan et al.
There are many publications on the culinary and medicinal uses of mushrooms. However, there is no such
bibliometric analysis done specifically for culinary and medicinal mushrooms. This study, therefore, aimed
to assess the most influential publications as well as the research trends and important drivers in the field of
culinary and medicinal mushrooms based on citation analysis by using bibliometric methods. The important
drivers in this study refer to who and what has driven the growth or development in the research field of culinary and medicinal mushrooms. The research questions to be answered were (a) what are the trends of the top
1000 most-cited papers in the subject of culinary and medicinal mushrooms, and (b) what are the sub research
areas and key themes in culinary and medicinal mushrooms that received the most attention and citations.
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS
A. Data Sources
Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature, was chosen as the source of
data in this study. We searched Scopus to identify publications with the following string: TITLE-ABS-KEY
(mushroom OR culinary AND medicinal). This string identifies publications that contain any of these terms
in the abstract, title, or keywords. The publications were arranged according to citation count in descending
order. The publications included were not limited to their type (e.g., review, short survey, article, etc.), research model, or language used in the publication. The overall workflow of data acquisition is summarized
in a schematic diagram (Fig. 1).
B. Data Extraction
On 18 May 2019, all bibliometric information obtained from Scopus was exported into a comma-separated
value (CSV) format and Microsoft Excel was used to sort the data. All authors, journal or book titles, type
FIG. 1: Schematic diagram of data acquisition
International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms
A 53-Year Bibliometric Analysis523
of publication, year of publication, volume, issue, page count, digital object identifier (DOI) and link, affiliations and correspondence address, publisher, PubMed ID, language, country of origin, abstract, keywords,
total citation count, impact factor, and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) were extracted and recorded.
C. Bradford’s Law of Scattering
The top 30% of the total publications retrieved from Scopus was subjected to the Bradford’s law of scattering to investigate how a selected paper is distributed or scattered in the journals.4 The flow of conducting
the law was shown in Fig. 1.
D. Visualization of Term Co-Occurrence and Country Co-Authorship Network
VOSviewer was used to analyze and visualize the terms in the titles and abstracts of the 1000 most-cited
publications (Fig. 1).10 Scopus data that includes the 1000 most-cited publications was used to create the
term co-occurrence map based on text data. All occurrences of a term in a document were counted. The
minimum number of occurrences of a term is 50. The terms selected were screened and those that were
irrelevant were removed. The terms were included to generate a term co-occurrence network visualization.
Besides, VOSviewer was also used to create a country co-authorship network map in this study. The minimum number of publications of a country is 10. Those countries that are not connected to each other were
excluded from the visualization map.
E. Statistical Analysis
All statistical analyses were performed using SPSS software ver. 22.0 (IBM, USA). Pearson’s correlation
test was used to determine (1) if the number of published papers is affected by the impact factor of a journal,
and (2) if the number of citations of the articles included is affected by the years since publication. Pearson’s
correlation coefficient, r, ranged from −1 through 0 to +1. Two scatter plots were constructed. If the points
representing the values of the X-axis and Y-axis as a single coordinate are closer to a straight line, this indicates a stronger linear relationship between the two variables on X-axis and Y-axis, and vice versa.11 The
result of the test is considered statistically significant if P < 0.01 or P < 0.05.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Distribution of Overall Publications by Publication Years
Between 1966 and 2019 (i.e., a time span of 53 years), there were a total of 3252 publications relevant to
culinary and medicinal mushrooms according to the Scopus data retrieved in May 2019. There is an increase in terms of the quantity of research output on culinary and medicinal mushrooms as shown in Fig.
2. The number of published research papers on culinary and medicinal mushrooms steadily increased from
1966 (n = 1) through 2006 (n = 96), but a slight decrease in publication was observed in 2007 (n = 83) compared with 2006 (n = 96). Then, the number of publications increased from 2008 (n = 132) onwards, with
the number of publications almost double in 2014 (n = 269) compared with 2008 (n = 132). In 2018 (n =
332), the activity in culinary and medicinal mushrooms research reached a peak. The accumulated number
of publications from 1966 to 2019 shown in Fig. 2B gives a better understanding of the growing trend of
culinary and medicinal mushrooms research.
Based on the trend in Fig. 2 that showed an overall increased number of publications over the 53-year
period, we concluded that the research area of culinary and medicinal mushrooms has become increasingly
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Chan et al.
FIG. 2: (A) Trends in the number of publications on culinary and medicinal mushrooms research from 1966 to 2019.
(B) The annual and accumulated number of publications from on culinary and medicinal mushrooms research 1966
to 2019.
important. It is also foreseen that the number of published articles in the field of culinary and medicinal
mushrooms would peak in 2020, overrunning the total number of publications recorded in 2019.
B. Trends and Citation Count of the Top 1000 Most-Cited Publications on Culinary and
Medicinal Mushrooms
We only selected the top 1000 most-cited publications, which was approximately 30% of the total number
of items retrieved from Scopus. As shown in Fig. 3A, the number of papers from the top 1000 most-cited
publications showed an increasing trend from 2000 (n = 96) onwards, with a slight decrease observed from
2015 to 2019 (n = 116). This is likely because a paper published later may have less chance or time to be
cited by other researchers.
Yeung et al.12 published a bibliometric analysis with the identification and analysis of the 100 mostcited papers on nutraceuticals and functional foods research. Another bibliometric study published by
Huang et al.13 identified and analyzed a total of 2891 papers on gastrointestinal microbiome research. The
sample size, which represents the number of publications identified and analyzed, can be different in each
bibliometric analysis. In this study, we decided to identify and analyze a total of 1000 most-cited publications considering the potential limitations of smaller sample size. A result may be less conclusive using a
smaller sample size while a larger sample size (n >1000) may lead to a waste of limited available resource
in terms of time.14
The number of citations received by the 1000 publications ranged from 11 to 1282 with a cumulative total citation of 43,507. The top 10 most-cited publications are shown in Table 1. Most of the top 10
International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms
A 53-Year Bibliometric Analysis525
FIG. 3: (A) The trend and distribution of the 1000 most-cited publications on culinary and medicinal mushrooms
research. (B) Pearson’s correlation analysis between the number of citation and years since publication for the 1000
top-cited publications on culinary and medicinal mushrooms. Pearson correlation coefficient, r = +0.237, P < 0.01, n
= 1000. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
most-cited publications are reviews (n = 5), articles (n = 1), and short surveys (n = 3), with one book (n =
1). It is noteworthy to mention that while review articles can guide new subjects of study and have their own
importance, real and direct progress comes from experimental studies reflected in original research articles.
Regardless of the type and year of publication, Wasser published the top-ranked paper in terms of total
citation count.15 It is a short survey (mini review) reporting the use of medicinal mushrooms as a source
of antitumor and immunomodulating polysaccharides published in the journal Applied Microbiology and
Biotechnology.15 The total citation count of this publication (n = 1282) is almost double compared with the
second most-cited publication (n = 611) (Table 1). This indicates that this short survey is often referred and
it is considered fundamental as it provides guidance for new researchers in the field of culinary and medicinal mushrooms. Interestingly, among the top 10 most-cited publications, Solomon P. Wasser contributed to
four of them, some of which were co-authored. This shows that Solomon P. Wasser is a researcher who has
significantly impacted and driven the research trends of culinary and medicinal mushrooms.
Among the top 10 publications shown in Table 1, five publications focused on either antitumor/cancer
or immunomodulating activity of mushrooms or both, whereas other publications focused on the various
medicinal and nutritional value of mushrooms. This is likely because cancer, as one of the leading causes
of death in the world, can affect anyone and create a significant burden on patients, families, and society.
Other topics like antioxidant activity, biotechnological applications and potential, as well as cultivation of
mushrooms, are also among the top cited articles.
We also studied the relationship between the year since publication and the citation count regarding
the 1000 most-cited publications on culinary and medicinal mushrooms. It was hypothesized that the years
Volume 22, Issue 6, 2020
TABLE 1: List of top 10 most-cited culinary and medicinal mushrooms publications arranged according to their total citation counts
No.
Authors
Article title
Journal/book title
Type
Year
Total citation
count as of
May 2019
1
Wasser SP
Medicinal mushrooms as
Short survey
2003
1282
Applied Microbiology
a source of antitumor and
and Biotechnology
immunomodulating polysaccharides
2
Zhang M, Cui SW,
Antitumor polysaccharides from
2007
611
Trends in Food Science Review
Cheung PCK, Wang Q mushrooms: a review on their
and Technology
isolation process, structural
characteristics and antitumor
activity
3
Wasser SP, Weis AL
Therapeutic effects of substances
Review
1999
571
Critical Reviews in
occurring in higher Basidiomycetes Immunology
mushrooms: A modern perspective
4
Lindequist U,
The pharmacological potential of
Review
2005
550
Evidence-Based
Niedermeyer THJ,
mushrooms
Complementary and
Jülich WD
Alternative Medicine
5
Kalač P, Svoboda L
A review of trace element
Article
2000
406
Food Chemistry
concentrations in edible mushrooms
6
Wasser SP
Medicinal mushroom science:
2010
399
International Journal of Review
history, current status, future trends Medicinal Mushrooms
and unsolved problems
7
Borchers AT, Stern JS, Mushrooms, tumors, and immunity Proceedings of the
Short survey
1999
399
Hackman RM, Keen
Society for Experimental
CL, Gershwin ME
Biology and Medicine
8
Chang ST, Miles PG
N/A
2004
341
Mushrooms: Cultivation, Book
Nutritional Value,
Medicinal Effect, and
Environmental Impact
9
Moradali MF,
Immunomodulating and
Review
2007
311
International
Mostafavi H, Ghods S, anticancer agents in the realm of
Immunopharmacology
Hedjaroude GA
Macromycetes fungi (macrofungi)
10 Zaidman BZ, Yassin
Medicinal mushroom modulators
Short survey
2005
302
Applied Microbiology
M, Mahajna J, Wasser of molecular targets as cancer
and Biotechnology
SP
therapeutics
24
23
22
21
20
19
18
16
17
15
Ref.
526
Chan et al.
International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms
A 53-Year Bibliometric Analysis527
since publication would influence the number of citations of the publications. As shown in Fig. 3B, there is
a weak positive correlation (Pearson’s correlation of +0.237, p < 0.01) between the two variables. It shows
that the years since publication, to a limited extent, does influence the citation counts of the publications.
However, the weak correlation also suggests that there may be other factors, such as open access, authors,
countries, focus of research, and up-to-date publications, that contribute to the number of citations of the
publications. This suggests that a paper that has been published for a longer time does not necessarily have
a higher number of citations. For example, a short survey published by Wasser15 has a higher citation count
(n = 1282) compared with the review published by Wasser and Weis.16 This is likely due to the fact that a
publication may become less cited as the content becomes outdated over the years.
C. Journal Analysis and Journal-Level Metrics
The total number of journal articles (nonbook and non–book chapter) was found to be 993. Figure 1 shows
the division of Bradford’s zone in this study. Based on Bradford’s law of scattering, one-third of the 993
papers, i.e. 331 of them, were published in 14 core journals as depicted in Table 2: International Journal of
Medicinal Mushrooms (n = 102), Journal of Ethnopharmacology (n = 38), Food Chemistry (n = 36), Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology (n = 23), Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine
(n = 16), Biological and Pharmaceutical Bulletin (n = 16), Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (n
= 15), Journal of Natural Products (n = 14), Food and Chemical Toxicology (n = 13), International Immunopharmacology (n = 12), PLoS One (n = 12), Journal of Medicinal Food (n = 12), Fitoterapia (n = 11),
and Carbohydrate Polymers (n = 11).
There is a rapid growth of interest in culinary and medicinal mushrooms research; the 993 most-cited
publications were distributed across a wide range of journals. For the 14 core journals, the publishers are
mainly located in either the United States (n = 5) or the Netherlands (n = 5), with a few in the Germany (n
= 1), Egypt (n = 1), Japan (n = 1), and the United Kingdom (n = 1). Regarding impact factor (IF), Carbohydrate Polymers has the highest 2017 impact factor (IF = 5.158), followed by Food Chemistry (IF = 4.946),
and Food and Chemical Toxicology (IF = 3.977).
We studied the relationship between the impact factor and publication count regarding the research on
culinary and medicinal mushrooms. As shown in Fig. 4, there is an insignificant negative correlation (Pearson’s correlation of –0.355, P = 0.213) between the two variables. This shows that a journal that publishes
a higher number of articles does not necessarily have a higher impact factor. For example, the International
Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms published the greatest number of highly cited publications (n = 102) on
culinary and medicinal mushrooms but the journal’s IF and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) is relatively lower
than the other journals. This is likely since this journal publishes precise and specific subjects pertaining to
medicinal mushrooms, including but not limited to medicinal value of mushrooms, pharmacology, taxonomy, morphology, nomenclature, biotechnology, clinical trials, and many more.25,26
According to the bibliometric study published by Yeung et al.8 on ethnopharmacology, Journal of Ethnopharmacology published the greatest number of articles (n = 17). Their result is similar to our study
in which the top core journal was International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms. This indicates that a
researcher tends to submit his/her manuscript according to the journal’s scope. The negative correlation
also suggests that the impact factor is unlikely a factor that affects the decision making on which journal a
researcher should submit his/her manuscript to.
Various types of metrics can be used to evaluate a journal quantitatively. According to Mering,3 a
journal’s quality may be indicated by the frequency of citation for the articles published in the journal, or
comparison against other journals in the discipline. Some examples of journal metrics are impact factor,
SJR, Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP), and CiteScore metrics. Journal impact factor is probably the most popular analytic to evaluate a journal’s quality. A journal’s impact factor can be obtained
Volume 22, Issue 6, 2020
a
Impact factor based on the 2017 Journal Citation Reports® (Clarivate Analytics, 2018); b5-year impact factor based on the 2017 Journal Citation Reports® (Clarivate
Analytics, 2018); cSJR: SCImago Journal Rank based on year 2017; dSNIP: Source Normalized Impact per Paper; eCiteScore data from 2017.
TABLE 2: List of top 14 core journals in which one-third of 993 research publications on culinary and medicinal mushroom were published
No
Journal
Publication
Publisher
Country
Impact 5-year impact SJRc SNIPd CiteScoree
count
factora
factorb
1
102
Begell House
United States
1.211
1.394
0.433
0.661
1.38
International Journal of
Medicinal Mushrooms
2
38
Elsevier
Netherlands
3.115
3.493
1.150
1.435
3.49
Journal of
Ethnopharmacology
3
36
Elsevier
Netherlands
4.946
4.879
1.793
2.109
5.19
Food Chemistry
4
23
Springer
Germany
3.340
3.602
1.182
1.161
3.64
Applied Microbiology and
Biotechnology
5
16
Hindawi
Egypt
2.064
2.482
0.683
0.868
2.00
Evidence-Based
Complementary and
Alternative Medicine
6
16
J-STAGE
Japan
1.694
1.766
0.626
0.674
1.71
Biological and
Pharmaceutical Bulletin
7
15
American Chemical United States
3.412
3.791
1.269
1.343
3.64
Journal of Agricultural and
Society (ACS)
Food Chemistry
8
14
American Chemical United States
3.885
3.904
1.368
1.487
3.81
Journal of Natural Products
Society (ACS)
9
13
Elsevier
Netherlands
3.977
3.900
1.144
1.427
3.99
Food and Chemical
Toxicology
10
12
Elsevier
Netherlands
3.118
3.056
1.051
0.974
3.16
International
Immunopharmacology
11
12
Public Library of
United States
2.766
3.352
1.164
1.111
3.01
PLoS One
Science
12
12
Mary Ann Liebert
United States
1.954
2.233
0.688
0.693
2.16
Journal of Medicinal Food
13
11
Elsevier
Netherlands
2.642
2.867
0.937
1.248
2.91
Fitoterapia
14
11
Elsevier
United
5.158
5.326
1.428
1.733
5.58
Carbohydrate Polymers
Kingdom
528
Chan et al.
International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms
A 53-Year Bibliometric Analysis529
FIG. 4: Pearson’s correlation analysis between the number of papers published and impact factor of the 14 core
journals that published the 331 top highly cited papers on culinary and medicinal mushrooms. Pearson correlation
coefficient, r = –0.355, P = 0.213, n = 14. Correlation is not significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
from the Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics). It measures a journal’s impact or influence based
on citations received by published papers. It is defined as “the average number of citations received in a
particular year by papers published in the journal during the past two years.” On the other hand, SJR, which
was launched in 2007, measures the prestige or influence per paper published in a particular journal. SJR
is based on the principle that not all citations are considered equal in their values.27 While SNIP measures
the actual citations received relative to citations expected for a particular subject field, CiteScore measures
the average citations received per document published in a journal.28 The CiteScore metric was recently
released in 2016 and it was said to serve as an alternative to impact factor as impact factor is often blamed as
being “opaque” because the calculations are “based on hidden data.”29 CiteScore metric, on the other hand,
is comprehensive, current, transparent, and easily replicated.
D. Publication Analysis Based on Countries/Regions
The 1000 most-cited publications on culinary and medicinal mushrooms research were published by researchers in 61 regions/countries. The top 10 countries that contributed to the 1000 most-cited culinary and
medicinal mushrooms publications are shown in Table 3.
The top 10 countries (8 Asian countries, 1 South American country, and 1 North American country)
published 732 papers, accounting for 73.2% of the total number of publications. The leading country was
China, which contributed 20% (n = 200) of the total 1000 most-cited publications. The next two high-performing countries were South Korea and the United States, which contributed 9.4% (n = 94) and 8.9% (n =
89) of the total publications, respectively. According to Yao et al.30 gross domestic product (GDP) was the
primary factor that could benefit the publication productivity. The United States and China represent the
first- and second-largest economies in the world. With the exceptions of India, Malaysia, and Brazil, the
other countries shown in Table 3 are also considered to be advanced economies.31 Therefore, this suggests
that GDP is one of the important factors that affect the publication productivity of a country.
International collaboration analysis based on countries is important as it reflects the influential countries in this field and it also reveals the degree of communication or collaboration between countries. The
international collaboration analysis of the 1000 most-cited culinary and medicinal mushrooms publications
is shown as a network visualization map in Fig. 5. Different colors in the map represent the diversification of research directions. The size of nodes shows the degree of influence in this field in which the bigger the node size, the more influential the country is. The links between nodes represent the cooperative
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Chan et al.
TABLE 3: Top 10 countries contributed to the 1000 most-cited culinary and medicinal mushrooms publications
arranged according to the number of publications
Country
Number of publications
Percentage (%)
China
200
20
South Korea
94
9.4
United States
89
8.9
Taiwan
86
8.6
Japan
61
6.1
India
50
5.0
Malaysia
45
4.5
Hong Kong
44
4.4
Brazil
39
3.9
Israel
24
2.4
Total number of publications = 732 (73.2%)
FIG. 5: The country co-authorship network visualization of the 1000 most-cited culinary and medicinal mushrooms
publications (based on VOSviewer). The distance between two nodes in the visualization indicates the relatedness of
the countries in terms of co-authorship links. The closer the two nodes are located to each other, the stronger their
collaboration. The strength of co-authorship links between countries is also represented by the thickness of the lines.
relationships between the countries. The thickness of the links and the distance between the nodes represent
the cooperation level among the countries.
China and the United States, with the greater number of publications and total link strength, are the
top two most prolific countries that contributed to the international collaboration on mushrooms research
(Table 4). As is indicated in the collaboration analysis shown in Fig. 5, both China and the United States
had collaborations with other 21 countries, followed by Germany and India. For China, collaboration was
mostly with Hong Kong and the United States. This indicates that geographical differences such as distance
between countries, locations on different continents, and geographical advantages are not the primary factors that influence the cooperative relationships among countries.
International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms
A 53-Year Bibliometric Analysis531
TABLE 4: Top 10 countries in co-authorship analysis arranged according to the number of publications
Country
Number of publications
Total link strength
China
249
99
United States
128
79
South Korea
104
31
Taiwan
91
24
Japan
70
21
India
53
15
Malaysia
48
11
Brazil
46
14
Hong Kong
39
22
Israel
29
29
E. Research Trends Based on the Subfield
From the title and abstract fields of the 1000 most-cited publications, VOSviewer’s co-occurrence analysis
of the terms identified a total of 51 co-occurred terms with a minimum of 50 occurrences and they are divided
into four clusters (effect, mushroom, extract, and disease) (Table 5). Binary counting method was applied in
this analysis, which means that only the presence or the absence of a term in a document is considered. The
TABLE 5: Terms that appeared most in the titles and abstracts of the 1000 most-cited culinary and medicinal
mushrooms publications
Term
Occurrence
Effect
484
Mushroom
465
Activity
459
Study
449
Medicinal mushroom
338
Cell
290
Production
238
Compound
237
Treatment
236
Species
218
Polysaccharide
208
Analysis
205
Extract
204
Value
196
Level
196
187
Ganoderma lucidum
Use
180
Mechanism
158
Concentration
153
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Chan et al.
FIG. 6: The term co-occurrence network visualization of the 1000 most-cited culinary and medicinal mushrooms
publications (based on VOSviewer). The terms were divided into four clusters with different colors: effect (green),
mushroom (red), disease (yellow), and extract (blue).
high-frequency co-occurring terms included Ganoderma lucidum. This indicates that therapeutic properties
of medicinal mushrooms, especially G. lucidum, also referred to as “Lingzhi” in Chinese and “Reishi”
in Japanese, remain the research hotspot in culinary and medicinal mushrooms research. Polysaccharide
co-occurred frequently in the 1000 most-cited publications, which shows the research potential and applications of polysaccharides as one of the key active components in culinary and medicinal mushrooms, and
is commonly listed in research on both culinary and/or medicinal mushrooms.32 Besides polysaccharide,
protein is also one of the frequently mentioned terms in this field. Based on Fig. 6, the term activity is linked
to cancer, apoptosis, inhibition, antioxidant activity, as well as mechanism. This indicates that cancer and
antioxidant properties of culinary and medicinal mushrooms have become the focus in this field.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
We believe that various culinary and medicinal mushrooms are associated with a wide range of medicinal
properties based on ethnopharmacology and traditional knowledge. The mechanistic physiological effects
of these mushrooms and their mycocomponents are the drivers of their medicinal effects. The emerging new
therapeutic properties or the continuous research on currently discovered therapeutic properties of mushrooms would be the trend of future research. This study also presented some limitations. The relationship
between the publication count and other journal metrics besides impact factors should also be considered.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Universiti Malaya for BK011-2017 grant and Ministry of Higher Education
Malaysia for Fundamental Research Grant Scheme, FP016-2019A. The authors declare that they have no
conflict of interest.
International Journal of Medicinal Mushrooms
A 53-Year Bibliometric Analysis533
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