Mapping the Scientific Research on Health Literacy

Health literacy includes skills required to make informed personal and social health decisions. Due to the increasing importance of health literacy, it is vital to investigate the quantitative and thematic publication process in this field. This study aims to investigate the publication process and draw a scientific map of articles in health literacy.

The current research is a descriptive-analytical one. Scientometric techniques were used for anlayzing health literacy publications from 2012 to January 23, 2023 in the PubMed database. RStudio and VOSviewer software were used for data analysis.

In the 12 years under review, 8,242 documents in the field of health literacy have been published. 27,193 authors and 1,588 journals contributed to the publication of these documents. Seven hundred four authors contributed to single-author papers, and 26,489 contributed to multi-author papers. International participation in this area was 11.95%. Wolf MS, Osborne RH, and Paasche-Orlow MK are the most contributing health literacy researchers. America-China registered the most scientific cooperation pairs. The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health has published the most health literacy articles among the journals. The research trend in 2013-2014 was toward teaching and educational principles and methods.

Researchers in the field of health literacy pay special attention to the issue of scientific cooperation. In the reviewed articles, COVID-19 is one of the prominent topics that coincide with the issue of health literacy.