E-Cigarettes: A Scientometric Assessment of Global Publications Output during 2001-18

The paper makes assessment of global e-cigarette publications (3885 publications) trends over the past 18 years (2001-8) via a bibliometric analysis, using Scopus database. The paper further provides an insight into qualitative performance of e-cigarettes research in terms of qualitative indicators, such as relative citation index, citations per paper, highly cited papers, top 15 global organizations and authors in the field, most favored subjects in the field. E-cigarettes annual and nine-year cumulative global publication output registered 113.60% and 7570.0% growth during the last 18 years and its citation impact averaged to 18.71 citations per paper. 89.63% share of the global research output and more than 100% share of global citation output in the field emanates from top 10 (among 37 participating countries) during 2001-18. Seven (out of top 10) countries registered relative citation index above their global average of 1.29: Canada and Italy (2.32 each), Greece (1.75), Australia (1.54), U.K. and Switzerland (1.42 each) and France (1.30) during 2001-18. Medicine is the most preferred subject on e-cigarettes research with 81.75% global publications share, followed distantly by pharmacology, toxicology and pharmaceutics (13.15%), social sciences (9.146%), environment science (7.26%), etc. during this period. Among 525 organizations and 729 authors participating in e-cigarettes research, the top 15 organizations and the authors collectively contributed 26.64% and 13.64% global publication share and 47.78% and 33.25% global citation share, respectively during 2001-18. USA and U.K. were the leading global organizations with global publications share of 52.15% and 12.54%. University of California, San Francisco, USA and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hills, USA were the leading organizations with 135 and 87 papers. Roswell Park Cancer Institute, USA (53.79 and 2.88) and Food and Drug Administration, MD, USA (42.33 and 2.26) were the two leading organizations in terms of citation impact per paper and relative citation index. R. Polosa (61 papers) and K.E. Farsalinos (45 papers) were the two most productive authors on the subject. M.L. Goniewicz (77.02 and 4.12) and S.A. Glantz (69.50 and 3.71) were the two leading authors in terms of citation impact per paper and relative citation index. Nicotine and Tobacco Research (184 papers) and Tobacco Control (168 papers) were the leading journals (among 305 participating journals) publishing on this theme. 141 papers (among 3885 total papers) registered 100 to 2902 citations per paper, cumulating to a total 31459 citations, averaging to 223.11 citations per paper.