A Scientometric Assessment of Indian Publications on Vitamin D Deficiency during 2006-15

The present study examines 536 Indian publications on “Vitamin D Deficiency” as covered in Scopus database during 2006-15, experiencing an annual average growth rate of 37.08%, citation impact per paper of 8.30 and international collaborative publication share of 15.30%. The global publications share on “Vitamin D Deficiency” came from several countries, of which the top 10 most productive countries accounted for 73.67% share of global publications and 99.22% share of global citations during 2006-15. A large number of Indian organizations and authors participated in Indian research on “Vitamin D Deficiency” during 2006-15, of which the top 15 organizations and 15 authors contributed 47.57% and 33.02% publications share and 71.45% and 69.59% citation share respectively of the Indian output and citations. Medicine, among subjects, contributed the largest publications share of 88.62%, followed biochemistry, genetics & molecular biology (22.01%), pharmacology, toxicology & pharmaceutics (6.53%), nursing (6.34%) neurosciences (2.80%), agricultural & biological science (2.05%) and immunology & microbiology (1.68%) during 2006-15. Of the total Indian publications, 530 appeared in several journals, of which the top 15 journals contributed 31.72% share of the India’s output. The top 13 highly cited papers registered 50 to 479 citations, and together contributed 1535 citations, leading to the average citation per paper of 118.08. Concludes that there is an urgent need to frame a national policy in this area, undertake more R&D and recognize vitamin D deficiency as a public health problem and allocate more healthcare funds in this area.