Mapping Ayurveda Research on COVID-19: A Bibliometric Analysis of PubMed Literature

Background: Ayurveda is an Indian System of Medicine practiced predominantly in India and sporadically in other parts of the globe. Many research articles have been published during the COVID-19 pandemic about the role of Ayurveda in COVID-19. Given this background, a bibliometric analysis was conducted to map the research landscape of Ayurveda in the field of COVID-19. Materials and Methods: The PubMed search engine was used for the extraction of articles on June 25, 2024. A science mapping technique was adopted to conduct the bibliometric analysis. The visualizations were plotted using the VOSviewer, and Microsoft Excel was used to analyze the frequencies of author-wise, journal-wise, and year-wise publications. Results: Of the 343 articles, 175 were included for analysis. The Journal of Ayurveda and Integrative Medicine has the highest number of publications ( n = 43), the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences and its regional centers have the maximum ( n = 8) research papers published, S. Narayanam has the maximum publications ( n = 9), and as the first author A. Balakrishna has maximum publications ( n = 6). From 2020 to 2024 and till the time of data retrieval, 70 publications have been recorded in 2022. The keywords “humans” ( n = 131) and “Ayurveda” ( n = 90) have been used the maximum times in the MeSH and author keywords category, respectively. Conclusion: The number of publications has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic regarding the role of Ayurveda in COVID-19; however, a paucity of standard journals was observed as only two dedicated Ayurveda journals were found through this bibliometric analysis.