Global Taxus research trend and performance in science citation index from 1991 to 2010

In this study, we aimed to evaluate the global scientific production of Taxus (yew) research, study the characteristics of Taxus research activities, and identify patterns, tendencies, and regularities of Taxusrelated articles. Data were based on the online version of Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIExpanded), from the Web of Science database. Articles referring to Taxus were assessed by the trend of publication output during 1991 to 2010. Globally, 2,916 papers were published during the 20-year study period. The most productive countries, institutions, Web of Science subject categories, and journals, as well as the most cited articles, were identified. The mainstream research on Taxus was in the plant sciences, biochemistry and molecular biology, cardiac and cardiovascular systems, biotechnology and applied microbiology. The G7 industrial countries, as well as China and India held the majority of total world production. Research on the various economically important Taxus species remained the hotspot during the 20-year study period, whereas that on the related topic “paclitaxel eluting stents” increased dramatically since 2002. With synthetic analysis of word in article title, author keyword, abstract, and key words Plus, it can be concluded that application of compounds derived from Taxus in clinical cardiology, pharmacology and oncology, and research related to Taxus chemistry, metabolism, cytology and microbiology is the ongoing Taxus-related research in the 21st century. Gaps are present in knowledge about the genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and bioinformatics of Taxus and their endophytic fungi.