Research Paper

International Journal of
Pharmacy Practice
International Journal of Pharmacy Practice 2019, 27, pp. 112–120

Bibliometric analysis of global publications in medication

adherence (1900–2017)
Waleed M. Sweileha, Samah W. Al-Jabib, Sa’ed H. Zyoudb, Nasr Y. Shraimc, Fathi M.A. Anayahd,
Ansam F. Sawalhaa and Adham S. AbuTahaa
a
Department of Physiology, Pharmacology and Toxicology, bDepartment of Clinical and Community Pharmacy, cDivision of Pharmacy, Department
of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah National University, Nablus, and dCollege of Engineering and
Technology, Palestine Technical University – Kadoorie (PTUK), Tulkarm, Palestine

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Keywords Abstract
bibliometrics; GIS; medication adherence;
VOSviewer Objectives Medication non-adherence is a worldwide problem. The aim of this
study was to assess the global research output, research trends and topics that
Correspondence shaped medication adherence research.
Ansam F. Sawalha, Department of
Methods A bibliometric methodology was applied. Keywords related to ‘medi-
Pharmacology and Toxicology, College of
cation adherence’ were searched in Scopus database for all times up to 31
Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah
National University, Nablus, Palestine. December 2017. Retrieved data were analyzsd, and bibliometric indicators and
E-mail: ansam@najah.edu maps were presented.
Key findings In total, 16 133 documents were retrieved. Most frequently
Received September 14, 2017 encountered author keywords, other than adherence/compliance, were HIV,
Accepted June 15, 2018 hypertension, diabetes mellitus, schizophrenia, depression, osteoporosis, asthma
and quality of life. The number of documents published from 2008 to 2017
doi: 10.1111/ijpp.12471
represented 62.0% (n = 10 005) of the total retrieved documents. The h-index
of the retrieved documents was 223. The USA ranked first (43.1%; n = 6959),
followed by the UK (8.6%; n = 1384) and Canada (4.5%; n = 796). The USA
dominated the lists of active authors and institutions. Top active journals in
publishing research on medication adherence were mainly in the field of AIDS.
Top-cited articles in the field focused on adherence to anti-HIV medications,
the impact of depression on medication adherence and barriers to adherence.
Conclusion Adherence among HIV patients dominated the field of medication
adherence. Research on medication adherence needs to be strengthened in all
countries and in different types of chronic diseases. Research collaboration
should also be encouraged to increase research activity on medication adher-
ence in developing countries.

important, accessible and widely accepted method to

Background
Adherence is defined as the extent to which the patient
follows the recommendations regarding his or her pre-
scribed treatment regimens. Non-adherence could happen
at different stages of therapy including failure to have a
prescription dispensed, or failure to initiate the treatment,
or failure to continue the medication, or failure to use
the medication as agreed.[1,2] Medication non-adherence
is a worldwide problem with varying rates across different
countries and different disease populations.[3,4] Bibliomet-
ric analysis is defined as the application of statistical
methods to the published literature.[5–7] It is becoming an
assess the national and international research productivity,
international collaboration, citation analysis, research
trends and scientific development in a particular field.[8–
10]
Bibliometric analysis has been applied to malaria
research,[11] antibiotic resistance,[12] cancer,[9] diabetes,[13]
nutrition[11,14] and many other diseases.[15,16] However, to
the authors’ best knowledge, no bibliometric indicators of
medication adherence as a medical concept had been
studied. Furthermore, medical conditions that require
adherence to long-term therapies are considered major
global health burden and research on such conditions is
highly needed and encouraged.[17,18] Therefore, the aim of

International Journal of Pharmacy Practice 2019, 27, pp. 112--120 © 2018 Royal Pharmaceutical Society
Waleed M. Sweileh et al.
this study was to assess and present bibliometric indica-
tors and mapping of the literature in medication adher-
ence.
Methodology
Choice of database
In bibliometric analysis, one database is usually used to
retrieve the required literature for subsequent quantitative
and qualitative analyses. In this study, SciVerse Scopus
was used as it has several advantages over other databases
such as Medline and Web of Science. For example, Sco-
pus is 100% inclusive of Medline and is larger than the
Web of Science.[19,20] Scopus includes more than 23 000
indexed journals in various medical, social and scientific
disciplines. Furthermore, Scopus has several functions that
facilitate bibliometric analysis in a user-friendly way.
Search strategy
The keywords used in the search strategy were obtained
from several previous systematic reviews in the field of
medication adherence.[21–24] The search strategy was
based on two queries that were combined together to per-
form the search. The first search query was based on the
title search using phrases such as ‘medication adherence’
or ‘adherence to medication’. The second search query
was based on the title search of keywords such as ‘adher-
ence’ or ‘compliance’, followed by the conditional
presence of the phrase ‘medication adherence’ in title–ab-
stract–key to ensure that the adherence keyword in the
titles is related to the field of study (Appendix S1). The
search strategy included data published anytime up to 31
December 2017. No language restriction was imposed in
the search strategy. Only documents published in peer-
reviewed journals were retrieved.
The validity of the search strategy
In bibliometric analysis, there is no need to check for
duplicate documents as all data are retrieved from one
database. This is in contrast to systematic review in which
duplicate documents are usually present because of the
use of different databases. In bibliometric analysis, the
retrieved documents need to be checked for the presence
of false-positive results.[25–27] In the current study, false-
positive results were identified by screening and manually
reviewing 10% of the retrieved documents, usually the
top-cited articles. Examples of false-positive documents
found in the retrieved data include ‘adherence to school’,
‘atrial compliance’, ‘compliance to hand washing’, ‘adher-
ence of physicians to guidelines’ and others. All
International Journal of Pharmacy Practice 2019, 27, pp. 112--120
113
false-positive results were excluded using an exclusion
step. The removal of the false-positive keywords and
phrases using the exclusion step and the agreement of the
number of documents for active authors with those found
in Scopus have been reported as an acceptable validation
procedure in bibliometric analysis.
For the absence of false-negative results, we compared
the number of publications obtained from the current
search strategy for the top 10 active authors with the
number of publications of the same authors obtained
from their Scopus profile. The extent of agreement
between the results obtained by the two methods is a
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measure of validity and absence of false-negative results.
The numbers obtained by the two methods are tested for
agreement using interclass correlation coefficient using
SPSS.[28–30] In the current study, there was a significant
agreement between the results obtained by the two meth-
ods with a P value <0.01 and an interclass correlation
coefficient higher than 95% indicative of high validity of
the search strategy.
Bibliometric indicators and mapping
In the current study, the retrieved documents were anal-
ysed and bibliometric indicators and mapping were pre-
sented. For citation analysis, Scopus provides the number
of citations for each document or set of documents.
Furthermore, Scopus provides the value of Hirsch index
(h-index) for any set of documents. The h-index is a
measure of impact or level of interest of authors in a par-
ticular field. However, the use of h-index has been
extended to measure the productivity and citation impact
of countries and institutions.[31] A country or an institu-
tion or an author with an h-index of x means that the
country or institution or author had a minimum of x
publications with a minimum number of x citations.[32]
For international collaboration, Scopus allows research-
ers to separate and identify documents with authors hav-
ing the same country affiliation from documents with
authors having different country affiliation. Documents
with authors from the same country represent intracoun-
try collaboration and termed ‘single country publications’,
while documents produced by researchers with different
country affiliations represent intercountry publication (in-
ternational collaboration) and termed ‘multiple country
publications’. For the growth of publications, the number
of publications was presented in 10-year interval. The
growth rate was determined by calculating the difference
in number of publications between two consecutive inter-
vals and dividing by the number of publications in the
earlier interval. For visualization and mapping of speci-
fic results, VOSviewer program was used.[33–35] VOS-
viewer program is available free of charge from Leiden
© 2018 Royal Pharmaceutical Society
114
University. In this study, most frequently author key-
words were mapped as a network visualization map. In
this map, the node size is indicative of the frequency of
occurrence of the keyword. International collaboration
between active countries was also mapped using a net-
work visualization map where the thickness of the con-
necting line between any two countries represents the
strength of research collaboration between the two speci-
fied countries.
Results
Types of documents and languages
In total, 17 611 documents were retrieved. Thirty-four
different languages were encountered in the retrieved doc-
uments; English (89.5%; n = 15 764) was most frequent,
followed by German (2.9%; n = 507) and Spanish (2.7%;
n = 468). The majority of retrieved documents were
research articles (77.4%; n = 13 634), followed by review
articles (10.5%; n = 1847), letters (3.6%; n = 635), notes
(2.9%; n = 517) and conference papers (2.1%; n = 375).
For the purpose of this study, letters, notes and editorials
were excluded from subsequent analysis because they do
not represent original research contribution. Therefore,
analysis was restricted to 16 133 original research docu-
ments. The overall data of the retrieved documents are
available in Excel format in Appendix S2.
Most frequently used author keywords
Visualization of most frequently encountered author key-
words, other than the default keyword adherence/compli-
ance, indicated that HIV/AIDS, antiretroviral therapy,[2]
hypertension, diabetes, asthma, schizophrenia, depression,
quality of life and osteoporosis were the most commonly
encountered author keywords (Appendix S3). Overlay
visualization indicated that terms such as mHealth, elec-
tronic monitoring, barriers, health literacy and sub-
Saharan Africa were encountered in documents published
after 2008.
Growth of publications and citation analysis
The growth of publications in medication adherence
started in mid-1960s. The number of publications
remained low until mid-1990s, followed by a noticeable
increase in the number of publications. There was a sev-
enfold increase in the number of publications from mid-
1990s to 2017. The growth of publications is shown in
Figure S1. The number of documents published in the
last period of the study (2008–2017) represents 62%
(n = 10 005) of the retrieved documents indicative of
© 2018 Royal Pharmaceutical Society
Medication adherence research
the increased interest in medication adherence in the
last decade.
Citation analysis and the highly cited
articles
The total number of citations received by the retrieved
documents was 425 019 with a mean of 26.3  69.1 and
a median of 8 (1–23) citations per document. The
h-index of retrieved documents was 223. At the time of
writing the manuscript (5 June 2018), there were 3165
(19.6%) documents that had no citations at all. The top
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10 cited articles are shown in Table 1. The top-cited arti-
cles included four reviews and six research articles.
Most active countries
Table 2 shows the most active countries in publishing
documents in the field of medication adherence. The USA
ranked first and contributed to 43.1% (n = 6959) docu-
ments. The UK ranked second and contributed to 8.6%
(n = 1384) documents. When research output was stan-
dardized by income, as measured by gross domestic pro-
duct per capita (GDP per capita), the USA ranked first
followed by the UK. Publications from the USA had the
highest h-index (191) and the highest number of citations
per article (34.7), followed by those from the UK (h-
index = 95; citations per article = 30.3) and those from
Canada (h-index = 82; citations per article = 34.1)
International collaboration
The USA had the highest number of collaborating coun-
tries, followed by the UK and France. For the USA,
17.5% (n = 1219) documents were coauthored by inter-
national researchers, while for the UK, 41.0% (n = 567)
documents were coauthored by international researchers.
Visualization of international collaboration among coun-
tries with a minimum productivity of 100 articles is
shown in Figure S2. The thickness of the connecting line
between any two countries represents the relative
strength of research collaboration. The USA and the UK
had a link strength of 220, while the USA and South
Africa had a link strength of 124, indicating that the
number of joint researches (research collaborations)
between the USA and UK is higher than that of the
USA and South Africa.
Geographical distribution of the retrieved
documents
Geographical distribution of the retrieved documents
based on the country affiliation of the authors indicated
International Journal of Pharmacy Practice 2019, 27, pp. 112--120
Waleed M. Sweileh et al. 115

Table 1 Top 10 cited articles in medication adherence field

Authors Title Year Source title Cited by Document type

Osterberg, L., Blaschke, T. Adherence to medication[63] 2005 New England Journal 4248 Review
of Medicine
Morisky, D.E., Green, L.W., Concurrent and predictive validity of a self- 1986 Medical Care 2400 Article
Levine, D.M. reported measure of medication
adherence[64]
Paterson, D.L., Swindells, S., Adherence to protease inhibitor therapy and 2000 Annals of Internal 2396 Article
Mohr, J., Brester, M., outcomes in patients with HIV infection[65] Medicine
Vergis, E.N., Squier, C.,
Wagener, M.M., Singh, N.,
Hudson, B.

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DiMatteo, M.R., Lepper, H.S., Depression is a risk factor for 2000 Archives of Internal 2192 Article
Croghan, T.W. noncompliance with medical treatment Medicine
meta-analysis of the effects of anxiety and
depression on patient adherence[66]
Claxton, A.J., Cramer, J., A systematic review of the associations 2001 Clinical Therapeutics 1591 Review
Pierce, C. between dose regimens and medication
compliance[67]
DiMatteo, M.R. Variations in patients’ adherence to medical 2004 Medical Care 1196 Review
recommendations: a quantitative review of
50 years of research[68]
Horne, R., Weinman, J. Patients’ beliefs about prescribed medicines 1999 Journal of 1147 Article
and their role in adherence to treatment in Psychosomatic
chronic physical illness[69] Research
Haynes, R.B., Ackloo, E., Interventions for enhancing medication 2008 Cochrane Database 1145 Review
Sahota, N., McDonald, H.P., adherence[70] of Systematic Reviews
Yao, X.
Morisky, D.E., Ang, A., Predictive validity of a medication 2008 Journal of Clinical 1002 Article
Krousel-Wood, M., adherence measure in an outpatient Hypertension
Ward, H.J. setting[71]
Sokol, M.C., McGuigan, Impact of medication adherence on 2005 Medical Care 985 Article
K.A., Verbrugge, R.R., hospitalization risk and healthcare cost[72]
Epstein, R.S.

Table 2 Top 10 countries publishing medication adherence research

Number of publications Number of

Rank Country Articles N = 16,133 (%) per GDP per capita (a1000) C/A h-index collaborating countries MCPb (%)
1st USA 6959 (43.1) 121.1 34.7 191 100 1219 (17.5)
2nd UK 1384 (8.6) 32.5 30.3 95 77 567 (41.0)
3rd Canada 757 (4.7) 17.2 34.1 82 61 310 (41.0)
4th Germany 623 (3.9) 12.9 15.1 50 47 168 (27.0)
5th Spain 575 (3.6) 15.8 16.7 51 46 95 (16.5)
6th Netherlands 544 (3.4) 10.7 22.9 57 57 228 (41.9)
7th France 510 (3.2) 12.3 22.2 56 65 177 (34.7)
8th Australia 499 (3.1) 10.7 18.2 47 52 190 (38.1)
9th Italy 432 (2.7) 11.3 19.7 48 41 116 (26.9)
10th Brazil 398 (2.5) 26.3 8.9 29 30 79 (19.8)
a
GDP per capita, gross domestic product (at purchasing power parity) per capita[73]; C/A, mean number of citations per article.
b
MCP, multiple country publications = international collaboration. The percentage in this column was calculated by dividing the numbers in MCP
column over that in the second column (number of articles) for each country.

that research in medication adherence is widespread but Australia had the highest research output, while Africa,
with varying intensity in different world regions. The map Middle East, Eastern Europe and Latin America had the
shows that Northern America, Western Europe and least contribution (Figure S3).

International Journal of Pharmacy Practice 2019, 27, pp. 112--120 © 2018 Royal Pharmaceutical Society
116 Medication adherence research

institutions in Northern America and Europe have the

Most active institutions and authors
Harvard University (2.8%; n = 453) ranked first, followed
by Johns Hopkins University (2.1%; n = 341), University of
California, San Francisco (2.0%; n = 327), and University
of California, Los Angles (1.5%; n = 248). Table 3 shows
the top 10 active institutions and the citation analysis for
publications from each institution. Top 10 active authors
are shown in Table 4. Bangsberg, D.R ranked first, fol-
lowed by Morisky D.E. and Safren, S. A. In terms of
mean number of citations per article, publications by
Bangsberg, D.R, ranked first, followed by those by Horne,
largest contribution to the field. The current study is one
of the few bibliometric studies carried out in the phar-
macy practice and pharmacy-related topics.[36–39] The
current study motivates further research on global
research output in pharmacy-related topics such as medi-
cation errors or medication adverse effects that could
identify the research gaps and future funding policies in
different world regions. The strategy used in the current
study assured the high validity of the results obtained
from Scopus database. It is true that Scopus is one of the
largest databases available; however, it is biased towards

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R. and Morisky, D.E. English journals, and therefore, research output from var-
ious developing countries that have many non-English
journals might have underestimated the output from
Names of journals published most in
developing countries. Most indexed journals in Scopus
medication adherence
are based in the USA, the UK and countries using English
Top 10 journals in publishing medication adherence language in science and research. Therefore, results
research are shown in Table 5. Five of the active journals obtained regarding authors and institutions might be
were in the field of AIDS. Publications in AIDS journal skewed towards countries with Scopus-indexed journals.
received the highest number of citations per document
(88.4). However, journal of AIDS Care ranked first (1.5%;
Table 4 Top 10 researchers publishing medication adherence
n = 248) in the number of documents published in the
researcher
field of medication adherence.
Number of publications (%)
Ranka Author N = 16,133 C/Article
Discussion First Bangsberg, D.R. 91 (0.6) 81.0
The current study aimed to assess the volume and trends Second Morisky, D.E. 71 (0.4) 67.2
Third Safren, S.A. 62 (0.4) 52.1
of medication adherence research worldwide. The current
Fourth De Geest, S. 50 (0.3) 51.8
study showed a noticeable increase in the number of pub-
Fifth Horne, R. 47 (0.3) 78.3
lications, particularly in the last decade of the study per- Sixth Kalichman, S.C. 44 (0.3) 37.6
iod. The literature in medication adherence was Seventh Wilson, I.B. 44 (0.3) 34.8
dominated by adherence pattern in HIV/AIDS patients Eighth Gross, R. 43 (0.3) 34.0
and by AIDS-related journals. The literature also showed Nineth Shrank, W.H. 42 (0.3) 44.8
the prominent focus on adherence pattern in non Tenth Feldman, S. R. 39 (0.2) 15.8
-communicable diseases including psychiatry. Psychologi- C/A, mean number of citations per article.
a
cal barriers to adherence had also a good share of publi- Authors with equal research output were given the same rank, and
cations on medication adherence. Authors and then, a gap is left in the ranking numbers.

Table 3 Top 10 institutions publishing medication adherence research

Rank Institution Number of publications (%) C/A h-index of the publications Country affiliation
First Harvard University 453 (2.8) 39.8 74 USA
Second Johns Hopkins University 341 (2.1) 45.2 64 USA
Third University of California, San Francisco 327 (2.0) 52.2 73 USA
Fourth University of California, Los Angeles 248 (1.5) 50.2 60 USA
Fifth The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 238 (1.5) 34.2 45 USA
Sixth University of Washington, Seattle 220 (1.4) 41.6 49 USA
Seventh Massachusetts General Hospital 216 (1.3) 50.8 59 USA
Eighth Duke University 193 (1.2) 32.8 60 USA
Nineth Columbia University in the City of New York 229 (1.4) 41.0 48 USA
Tenth The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 190 (1.2) 43.9 50 USA

C/A, number of citations per article.

© 2018 Royal Pharmaceutical Society International Journal of Pharmacy Practice 2019, 27, pp. 112--120
Waleed M. Sweileh et al. 117

Table 5 Top 10 journals publishing research on medication adherence

Ranka Journal Number of articles (%) C/A Impact factor of the overall journal
1st AIDS Care 248 (1.5) 32.6 1.824
2nd Patient Preference and Adherence 242 (1.5) 10.1 1.798
3rd AIDS and Behavior 230 (1.4) 24.1 2.916
4th Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes 193 (1.2) 58.9 3.935
5th PLoS One 211 (1.3) 17.1 3.54
6th AIDS Patient Care and STDs 175 (1.1) 36.4 3.236
7th Journal of General Internal Medicine 96 (0.6) 57.5 3.701
8th Journal of Pediatric Psychology 90 (0.6) 39.2 2.44
9th Patient Education and Counseling 103 (0.6) 34.2 2.429
10th AIDS 89 (0.6) 88.4 5.003

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10th Current Medical Research and Opinion 89 (0.6) 27.2 2.757

C/A, number of citations per article.

a
Journals with equal research output were given the same rank, and then, a gap is left in the ranking numbers.

The finding of the current study regarding the signifi-
cant increase in the number of publications in the past
three decades could be attributed, in part, to the new
vision of considering AIDS as a chronic disease in which
medication adherence is vital for prolonged survival and
for prevention of the spread of infection.[40–42] Preven-
tion and control of HIV infection, as well as suppression
and reduction of viral load in people living with HIV,
largely depend on adherence to recommended treat-
ment.[43,44] Poor adherence, especially at levels <95%,
negatively affects the HIV outcome and might lead to
the development of resistant HIV strains.[45–48] No
doubt, the growth of science, technology, increased num-
ber of scholars and academic institutions worldwide
played a positive role in the overall increase in the num-
ber of publications in medication adherence. The intro-
duction of new effective medications and new
therapeutic regimens for several chronic diseases includ-
ing HIV/AIDS has shifted the focus of disease control
towards the patients and their commitment towards tak-
ing their medications as prescribed which stimulated fur-
ther research on behavioural and psychological aspects of
medication adherence.
The current study indicated that research output in
medication adherence from certain Northern American
and European countries was relatively the highest. The
introduction of mobile technology into health services
might have increased the share of these developed coun-
tries. The current study indicated that 486 (3.0%) docu-
ments on medication adherence discussed the role of
advanced technology such as SMS, phone calls and
others to improve medication adherence.[49,50] The HIV
burden and the global vision of having minimum bur-
den of this infection by 2030 stimulated various devel-
oped countries to dig into barriers to achieving
successful therapeutic outcomes,[51] given that medica-
tion adherence is of extreme importance in improving
survival of HIV/AIDS and preventing transmission of
HIV infection.[52] The research budget available for
research in Northern America and Europe could have
played a positive role in the leading role of the USA and
other European countries in medication adherence
research.[53] China did not appear in the top 10 list. It
is possible that research output from China was underes-
timated because most of the Chinese medical journals
are unindexed in Scopus.
The top 10 active countries did not include any coun-
try in Africa or Middle East or Asia. The contribution of
these regions to medication adherence research is still
lagging behind. In the case of Africa where HIV burden
is high, the need for research in medication adherence is
of great importance.[54] Definitely, researchers in Africa
are keen to investigate and publish in this field. How-
ever, the lack of resources and, sometimes, the language
barrier hinder the research progress in this field in
Africa.
The current study indicated that several research topics
have shaped the field of medication adherence in the past
three decades. Adherence to HIV medication such as
antiretroviral therapy[2] and protease inhibitors remained
a top issue in medication adherence field. A second
important issue that shaped research in medication adher-
ence was the relationship between depression or beliefs
and medication adherence. Several studies have shown
that depression is a major barrier to medication adher-
ence among diabetic, HIV or cancer patients.[55–57] Beliefs
about medicines and illness perception are also important
psychological factors that have been intensively investi-
gated with relation to medication adherence and found to
be a decisive determinant of medication non-adherence
among patients with different types of diseases.[58,59]
A third important issue that influenced the field of
medication adherence was non-adherence in psychotic
conditions such as schizophrenia. It is estimated that non-

International Journal of Pharmacy Practice 2019, 27, pp. 112--120 © 2018 Royal Pharmaceutical Society
118 Medication adherence research

adherence in psychiatric conditions is relatively high and

could reach up to 50% with negative clinical and economic
consequences and that medication adherence is considered
a priority in psychiatry.[60–62] A fourth issue that influenced
research in medication adherence was the development of
interventional methods to enhance adherence.
As an overall recommendation, countries with a limited
number of publications in this field need to prioritize
medication adherence research by providing adequate
funding and support. The level of medication adherence
in various chronic diseases needs to be converted into
national strategies to improve medication adherence,
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank An-Najah National
University for giving us the opportunity to access most
recent information sources.
Authors’ contributions
WS initiated the idea and helped in data interpretation
and manuscript writing. SA and SZ did the literature
review and developed the methodology. NS, AT and FA

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improve disease outcomes and minimize loss of lives and
money. To achieve zero HIV/AIDS burden, countries with
high HIV burden, particularly those in Africa, need to
direct research efforts towards medication adherence as
one potential mechanism to minimize HIV/AIDS burden
in these countries. Research collaboration between devel-
oped and developing countries in the field of medication
adherence needs to be strengthened to facilitate research
in resource-limited countries that will ultimately decrease
the disease burden in these countries.
Declarations
did the data extraction, analysis and graphics and helped
in data interpretation. AS coordinated the efforts and
helped in the literature review, validation of the method-
ology, manuscript writing particularly the discussion part,
data interpretation and manuscript submission. All
authors state that they had complete access to the study
data that support the publication.
Ethics approval and consent to participate
IRB at An-Najah National University, Palestine, requires
no approval for bibliometric studies.

Conflict of interest Consent for publication

The Author(s) declare(s) that they have no conflicts of Not applicable.

interest to disclose.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding
agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Availability of data and materials
All data presented in this manuscript are available on
Scopus database using the search query listed in the sec-
tion Methodology.

4. Sweileh WM et al. Self-reported Finnish schizophrenia research. Nord

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Supporting information
Additional Supporting Information
may be found in the online version of
this article at the publisher’s web-site:
Appendix S1. Search strategy and
keywords used to retrieve documents
in medication adherence using Scopus
database.
Appendix S2. The retrieved data.
Appendix S3. Growth of publications
presented in 10-year intervals.
Figure S1. Most frequently encoun-
tered author keywords using VOS-
viewer.
Figure S2. International collaboration
in research pertaining to medication
adherence for countries with mini-
mum research output of 100 publica-
tions.
Figure S3. Geographical distribution
of the retrieved documents based on
country affiliation of the authors.