Introduction

There are two major religion schools in the world: Abrahamic and Dharmic. Dharmic religions are the family of religions consisting of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism from India (Frawley 1992). These religions are also classified as Eastern religions. Scientometrics and bibliometrics are novel and popular disciplines investigating publication features and trends of academic literature in a certain field (Şenel et al. 2017). Although the number of studies in religion and health area has been increasing gradually by year, the academic literature lacks a sufficient number bibliometric studies in this field (Damiano et al. 2016). In this study, we aimed to investigate bibliometric features of the health literature related to Dharmic religions. To the best our knowledge, this study was the first bibliometric and scientometric analysis in this field.

Methods

The sources of this study were databases provided by Web of Science (Thomson Reuters, New York, NY, USA). Web of Science (WoS) includes four databases titled Core Collection, SciELO Citation Index, Korean Journal Database and Russian Science Citation Index. We used “health” and “Hinduism” keywords for Hindu, “health” and “Buddhism” keywords for Buddhist, and “health” and “Jainism” keywords for Jain academic literature. All academic items published during a period of 1975–2017 were included in the study, and all documents produced in 2018 were excluded. SPSS (version 22.0, SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA; licensed for Hitit University, Çorum, Turkey) was used for the statistical analyses. GunnMap free resource was our main website for generating info-maps revealing publication density of the world countries (GunnMap n.d.). Scientometric networks were created by using VOSviewer software (Vosviewer 2017).

Results

Hinduism and Health Literature

Hinduism is the third most populous religion of the world with about one billion believers mainly from India, Nepal and Mauritius (Johnson et al. 2015; Vertovec and Malheiros 2002). We found a total of 155 articles as we searched all academic literature with the keywords of “health” and “Hinduism.” We found that high majority of the publications were original articles (n = 144, 92.9%) followed by unspecified materials, reviews and meetings (36.7, 13.55 and 6.45%, respectively) (Table 1). English was the primary language of the article (97.42%). Religion, psychology and behavioral sciences were the major research areas of Hinduism and Health literature (76.13, 65.81 and 59.35%, respectively). Das Chaudhuri AB (India) and Ghosh A (India) were the most prolific authors with three published items for each.

Table 1 Document types in health literature related to Dharmic religions published between 1975 and 2017
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The United States of America (USA) ranked first in the literature with 62 documents published followed by India, the UK and Bangladesh (n = 40, 33 and 6, respectively) (Fig. 1). The global distribution of the publication density was irregular, and we detected no items published from South America, China and the great majority of Africa (Fig. 2). University of London (UK), University of California (USA), Indian Statistical Institute (India) and University of College London (UK) were the most productive institutions (Table 2). Journal of Biosocial Science and Journal of Religion and Health were found to be the most contributor journals in this field (Table 3). Meeting and Conference titles in which the most abstracts related to Dharmic religions and health literature were presented between 1975 and 2017 as shown in Table 4. The peak year of Hinduism and Health literature was 2013 with 18 items (Fig. 3). There was no document produced between 1975 and 1980, 1982 and 1984, and 1986 and 1987. A detailed keyword analysis revealed that the most used keywords in the field of Hinduism and health were “Hinduism,” “religion,” “spirituality” and “Islam” (Table 5). Keyword “Hinduism” was noted to be connected “family systems” and “ethnicity” keywords. “Health” and “Ayurveda” keywords were found to be connected in the keyword network (Fig. 4).

Fig. 1
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Top ten countries producing articles in health and Hinduism field by total number of articles

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Fig. 2
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World countries publishing in health and Hinduism area

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Table 2 The most productive ten institutions in the literature of health and Dharmic religions published between 1975 and 2017
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Table 3 The most productive 10 journals in Dharmic religions and health literature between 1975 and 2017
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Table 4 Meeting and conference titles in which the most abstracts related to Dharmic religions and health literature were presented between 1975 and 2017
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Fig. 3
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Total number of publications of health and Hinduism field by year

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Table 5 The most used 10 keywords in the health literature related to Dharmic religions and health
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Fig. 4
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Network of the most used keywords of health and Hinduism area

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H-index of Health and Hinduism literature was measured as 13. We performed a holistic citation analysis of Hinduism and Health literature and noted that the article titled “What the World’s religions teach, applied to vaccines and immune globulins” by Grabenstein, John D. was the most cited document in this area (total citations = 423 and average citations per year = 8.67) (Table 6). Average citations of per item in the literature were calculated to be 9.2 times.

Table 6 Most cited 10 articles of the literature related to Dharmic religions and health
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Buddhism and Health Literature

Buddhism is the fourth populous religion in the world with over 500 million followers known as Buddhists (Johnson et al. 2015). It was founded in India subcontinent as a Dharmic religion. We found more documents than Hinduism and Health field as we searched “Buddhism” and “health” keywords in WoS databases. A total of 485 items were yielded in our basic database search. Original articles covered 94.43% of total literature (Table 1). English was the major language of the literature (77.11%) followed by Korean (20.82%) and no Sanskrit document was detected. The major research areas of Buddhism and Health were religion, psychology and behavioral Sciences (56.1, 53.4 and 50.1%, respectively). Shonin E and Van Gordon W were noted to be the most prolific authors with eight articles for each.

The USA was also the leading county in the literature of Buddhism and Health with 159 articles (32.78%) and followed by Thailand, the UK and China (10.72, 6.8 and 6.39%, respectively) (Fig. 5). Thailand and China were the major countries producing Buddhism and Health articles although no document was noted from China or Thailand in the field of Hinduism and Health (Fig. 6). Mahidol University (Thailand), Harvard University (USA) and University of California System (USA) were the most contributor institutions in this field (3.01, 2.47 and 2.47%, respectively) (Table 2). Journal of Religion and Health and Social Science Medicine were noted to be the most productive journals in this field (5.36 and 2.27, respectively) (Table 3). The peak year according to publication numbers by year was 2015 with 50 items (Fig. 7).

Fig. 5
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The ten most contributor countries publishing articles in health and Buddhism area by total number of items

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Fig. 6
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Countries publishing articles in health and Buddhism field

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Fig. 7
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Total number of publications in health and Buddhism topic by year

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H-index of the literature of Buddhism and Health was 31, and total citation number was measured to be 4636 times (4462 times without self-citations and 9.56 times per item). An article titled “From Posttraumatic-Stress-Disorder to Cultural Bereavement: Diagnosis of Southeast-Asian Refugees” by Eisenbruch, M. was the most cited document in the field of Buddhism and Health (n = 194 times, average citations per year = 6.93 times) (Table 6).

We performed a holistic keyword analysis, and the most used keywords were “Buddhism,” “mindfulness,” “spirituality” and “religion” (Table 5). We found a high connection between “Buddhism” and the keywords of “mindfulness,” “meditation,” “mental health” and “well-being” (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8
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Keyword network of health and Buddhism field

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Jainism and Sikhism

Jainism also known as Jainism or traditionally “Jain Dharma” is one of the oldest surviving religions of the world. It was founded by Vardhamana Mahavira in India in the sixth century BC. Jains are the believers of this religion, and they constitute 0.4% of total population of India (Somasundaram et al. 2016). We found only five articles in the literature of Jainism and Health (two documents from India, two from the USA and one from Russia). Sikhism was founded by Guru Nanak more than 500 years ago, and Sikhs constitute 1.9% of the population on India (Tatla 2008). We detected only ten articles related to Sikhism and Health and eight of which was original article (Table 1).

Discussion

Bibliometric and scientometric studies provide quantitative and qualitative analysis of science and academic literature and identify which areas are most active, popular and trending (Broadus 1987). Bibliometric studies reveal productivity of countries, authors and institutions and analyze publication patterns (Muslu 2018). Although there has been an increasing popularity of bibliometric studies, publications investigating academic literature in religion and health field are limited.

In 2014, Lucchetti and Lucchetti reported a bibliometric study investigating academic documents between 1999 and 2013 by searching PubMed database and they found that the USA was the most productive country (Lucchetti and Lucchetti 2014). Şenel and Demir also found that the USA ranked first in all documents published in the Journal of Religion and Health between 1975 and 2016 (Şenel and Demir 2018). In a recent published bibliometric study analyzing academic literature related to health and Abrahamic religions, it was reported that the USA was also found to be the most productive country as we detected in our study (Şenel 2018).

Total number of publications related to Dharmic religions was noted to be rather small compared to that related to Abrahamic religions (n = 655–3730, respectively). We detected the Journal of Religion and Health was the most prolific source in health literature related to Dharmic religions as reported in Abrahamic religions (Şenel 2018).

Conclusions

In the health literature related to Dharmic religions, on contrary of previous reports we found that the developing countries such as India, Thailand, Singapore and Taiwan were found to be included in the most productive countries list.