<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><sec id="j_jdis-2018-0006_s_006_w2aab3b7b1b1b6b1aab1c17b1Aa"><h3>Purpose</h3><p>The main goal of this study is to discover the scientific evolution of Cancer-Related Symptoms in Complementary and Alternative Medicine research area, analyzing the articles indexed in the Web of Science database from 1980 to 2013.</p></sec><sec id="j_jdis-2018-0006_s_007_w2aab3b7b1b1b6b1aab1c17b2Aa"><h3>Design/Methodology/Approach</h3><p>A co-word science mapping analysis is performed under a longitudinal framework (1980 to 2013). The documental corpus is divided into two subperiods, 1980–2008 and 2009–2013. Thus, the performance and impact rates, and conceptual evolution of the research field are shown.</p></sec><sec id="j_jdis-2018-0006_s_008_w2aab3b7b1b1b6b1aab1c17b3Aa"><h3>Findings</h3><p>According to the results, the co-word analysis allows us to identify 12 main thematic areas in this emerging research field: anxiety, survivors and palliative care, meditation, treatment, symptoms and cancer types, postmenopause, cancer pain, low back pain, herbal medicine, children, depression and insomnia, inflammation mediators, and lymphedema. The different research lines are identified according to the main thematic areas, centered fundamentally on anxiety and suffering prevention. The scientific community can use this information to identify where the interest is focused and make decisions in different ways.</p></sec><sec id="j_jdis-2018-0006_s_009_w2aab3b7b1b1b6b1aab1c17b4Aa"><h3>Research limitation</h3><p>Several limitations can be addressed: 1) some of the Complementary and Alternative Medicine therapies may not have been included; 2) only the documents indexed in Web of Science are analyzed; and 3) the thematic areas detected could change if another dataset was considered.</p></sec><sec id="j_jdis-2018-0006_s_010_w2aab3b7b1b1b6b1aab1c17b5Aa"><h3>Practical implications</h3><p>The results obtained in the present study could be considered as an evidence-based framework in which future studies could be built.</p></sec><sec id="j_jdis-2018-0006_s_011_w2aab3b7b1b1b6b1aab1c17b6Aa"><h3>Originality/value</h3><p>Currently, there are no studies that show the thematic evolution of this research area.</p></sec></abstract>

PurposeThe main goal of this study is to discover the scientific evolution of Cancer-Related Symptoms in Complementary and Alternative Medicine research area, analyzing the articles indexed in the Web of Science database from 1980 to 2013.Design/Methodology/ApproachA co-word science mapping analysis is performed under a longitudinal framework (1980 to 2013). The documental corpus is divided into two subperiods, 1980–2008 and 2009–2013. Thus, the performance and impact rates, and conceptual evolution of the research field are shown.FindingsAccording to the results, the co-word analysis allows us to identify 12 main thematic areas in this emerging research field: anxiety, survivors and palliative care, meditation, treatment, symptoms and cancer types, postmenopause, cancer pain, low back pain, herbal medicine, children, depression and insomnia, inflammation mediators, and lymphedema. The different research lines are identified according to the main thematic areas, centered fundamentally on anxiety and suffering prevention. The scientific community can use this information to identify where the interest is focused and make decisions in different ways.Research limitationSeveral limitations can be addressed: 1) some of the Complementary and Alternative Medicine therapies may not have been included; 2) only the documents indexed in Web of Science are analyzed; and 3) the thematic areas detected could change if another dataset was considered.Practical implicationsThe results obtained in the present study could be considered as an evidence-based framework in which future studies could be built.Originality/valueCurrently, there are no studies that show the thematic evolution of this research area.

Thematic Trends in Complementary and Alternative Medicine Applied in Cancer-Related Symptoms

School of Health and Human Services, National University

Dept. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence

Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering

Journal of Data and Information Science

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

PurposeThe main goal of this study is to discover the scientific evolution of Cancer-Related Symptoms in Complementary and Alternative Medicine research area,...

Theme Name	Number of Documents	Number of Citations	h-Index	g-index
ANXIETY	969	19,156	66	104
SURVIVORS-AND-PALLIATIVE-CARE	832	17,549	64	100
MEDITATION	669	12,837	54	89
TREATMENT-SYMPTOMS-AND-CANCER-TYPES	638	12,182	52	86
POSTMENOPAUSE	589	10,791	51	80
CANCER-PAIN	302	6,229	38	67
LOW-BACK-PAIN	272	6,232	41	69
HERBAL-MEDICINE	247	4,471	36	58
CHILDREN	187	4,213	35	58
DEPRESSION-AND-INSOMNIA	180	2,518	26	45
INFLAMMATION-MEDIATORS	141	3,299	30	54
LYMPHEDEMA	135	2,498	27	46

Thematic Trends in Complementary and Alternative Medicine Applied in Cancer-Related Symptoms

Article Category: Research Paper

Published Online: Jun 22, 2018

Page range: 1 - 19

Received: Apr 07, 2018

Accepted: May 28, 2018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2018-0006

Keywords
Cancer-related symptoms, Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Bibliometrics, Science mapping analysis, Thematic evolution, H-index

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

Performance measures for the detected areas.

Thematic Trends in Complementary and Alternative Medicine Applied in Cancer-Related Symptoms

Article Category: Research Paper

Published Online: Jun 22, 2018

Page range: 1 - 19

Received: Apr 07, 2018

Accepted: May 28, 2018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2018-0006

KeywordsCancer-related symptoms, Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Bibliometrics, Science mapping analysis, Thematic evolution, H-index

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Figure 4

Figure 5

Performance measures for the detected areas.

Keywords
Cancer-related symptoms, Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Bibliometrics, Science mapping analysis, Thematic evolution, H-index