Bibliometric Study on Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Literature (1995–2017) Concerning Chemosensory Perception

This was the first bibliometric study to investigate the functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) literature on chemosensory perception to reveal who contributed to these publications, where they were published, what concepts were investigated, and their relative impact in terms of citations.

Web of Science was searched to identify relevant articles. Research areas, authors, contributing countries and territories, journals, and publication years were recorded. The full record and cited references of these articles were used for further bibliometric analyses and network visualization.

The search yielded 5200 unique authors who had contributed to 1660 articles. The authors in the co-authorship network generally had higher numbers of citations per article than those in the periphery did. The 1660 articles were published in 423 journals, and the distribution did not fulfill Bradford’s law. Articles with contributions from European countries and the USA appeared to have more citations on average relative to those from Asian countries.

The contributions came from a diverse spectrum of authors who had published in journals in multiple disciplines. Papers involving the insula, orbitofrontal cortex, and amygdala had accumulated high numbers of total citations. The hedonic aspect of chemosensory perception in particular had received many citations.

The fMRI literature on chemosensory perception provides substantial neurobiological findings from multiple authors, countries, and journals. These results offer a contemporary overview of the literature and facilitate researchers in identifying relevant papers for future references.