Mapping the scholarly landscape of Saudi Arabia-related folk medicine: a bibliometric study

Abstract

Folk medicine remains an important component of health practices in Saudi Arabia and continues to attract growing scholarly attention. This study maps the scholarly landscape of folk medicine research related to Saudi Arabia by examining publication trends, author keywords, collaboration among institutions and countries, and the impact of authors and sources. Publications were retrieved from the Scopus and Web of Science databases using Saudi Arabia as the country affiliation. After PRISMA-guided identification, screening, deduplication, and eligibility assessment, 2527 publications published between 1989 and 2024 were retained for analysis. Bibliometrix was used for bibliometric computation and visualization, and VOSviewer was used to map country co-authorship and keyword co-occurrence networks. The results show sustained growth in publication output, strong participation by Saudi institutions, and broad international collaboration. The most prominent research themes were antioxidant activity, antimicrobial properties, herbal medicine, and traditional medicine. These findings provide a bibliometric overview of knowledge production in this area and may inform future systematic, clinical, and policy-oriented research on traditional medicine in Saudi Arabia.