The Evolution of Spirituality, Religion and Health Publications: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Abstract

This research aims to present a bibliometric analysis of the published documents on spirituality, religion and health. Despite the increasing number of publications spirituality, religion and health research in recent years, there is still little information about the effects of these publications in the literature. “Religion,” “spirituality,” “spiritual,” “health” and “medicine” keywords were used to search the Web of Science (WoS) database. Bibliometric analysis was conducted on the articles published between 1975 and 2017. The analysis was presented with network and density maps. The analysis also included the regression analysis to predict a number of publications in 2018. A total number of 1674 publications were found: 818 of these publications were articles. Of the 818 articles, 210 were religion, 198 were Public Environmental Occupational Health, 139 were Psychology, and 77 were performed in the field of Psychiatry. The most productive journal with 107 articles and 1129 citations was the Journal of Religion and Health. The USA (495; 60.5%) was the most productive country on spirituality, religion and health publications. The author who had the highest number of publications and citations was Koenig HG (33 publications; 4.03% and 1617 citations), the document who had the highest number of citations was Ellison CG and Levin JS (633 citations), and the author who had the highest number of citations in the references was Koenig HG, 2001, (126 citations). Duke Univ was the top institution in the number of publication (50 Article). This study will lead the researchers especially in terms of the important journals, active countries, authors, top-cited articles and current topics in spirituality, religion and health research. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.