Bibliometric Profile of the World Scientific Production on Thanatology in Nursing: Visibility, Impact, and Alternative Metrics

Objective: We will analyze the bibliometric metrics of the global scientific production in thanatology for nursing care. Methods: A cross-sectional and retrospective study with a bibliometric approach evaluated publications indexed in Scopus from 2017 to 2022. MESH terms were selected, and together with the Boolean operators AND OR a search strategy was developed and applied on December 20, 2022. We also analyzed the metadata of the publications included in the study using Elsevier's Scival program. Results: Scientific production has increased from 29 in 2017 to 48 in 2022. Most of the articles analyzed had national cooperation (45.2%) and single authorship was presented in a lower proportion (9.6%). The United States (55) is the country with the most publications; in addition, South Korea had the lowest production (10) and lowest weighted impact (FWCI: 0.35). The articles are mainly published in first-quartile journals, such as the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. The University of Toronto has 71% more citations than expected. Lester David and Dadfar Mahboubeh lead the subject with four published articles each. Conclusion: Thanatology in the field of nursing is a topic that has increased in recent years, and its main means of dissemination are the scientific journals of the Q1 and Q2 quartile. The leading country in this area was the United States, while Brazil was the only Latin American country with institutions among the most productive.