Abstract
Objective : This study reviews the recent trend of oriental medical prescription research. The data examined are the articles published in the Korean Journal of Oriental Medical Prescription from 1990 to 2009. Method : The data are retrieved through the internet database Oriental Medicine Advanced Searching Integrated System (OASIS) and the collection of the Korean Journal of Oriental Medical Prescription. The number of articles examined is 385, published in 25 volumes of the journal. This study examines the nature of the articles, research methods, subjects, and author information. Research subjects are sorted out by the OASIS key words for the articles published before 1999, and by key word indexes cited in the abstracts for the articles published sinceafter. Results : Among the 385 articles collected, 206 are research articles, 143 philological articles, 35 case studies, and 1 special contribution. A majority of research articles are experimental studies (199 articles or 96.6%), while clinical reports (5 articles or 2.43%), and others studies (2 articles) occupy a small portion. Most of experimental studies (183 articles or 91%) examine the effectiveness of certain prescriptions or treatments. Among the effectiveness studies, 114 articles (62.3%) employ in vivo experiment design, 52 articles (28.42%) in vitro experiments, and 17 articles (9.29%) both in vivo and in vitro experiments. In terms of research subject, the most frequently indexed key words are hepatotoxicity among diseases (9 articles), Bojungikgitang (Bu-Zhong-Yi-Qi-Tang) among prescriptions (10 articles), Buja (Acontii Tuber) among meteria medica (4 articles), immunity and anti-oxidation among efficacy terminology (6 articles each), and Donguibogam(東醫寶鑑) among references in the key words (25 articles). Universities are the main affiliation of authors (76.42%), followed by university hospitals (6.71%), non-academic research institutes (5.55%), local clinics (4.67), academic research institutes (2.81%), hospitals (2.38%), and others (1.44%). The most affiliated institute of the first and correspondent authors is Wonkwang University. In terms of authorship, co-authorship outnumbers sole-authorship by 82.08% to 17.92%. The proportion of authors of a single article is 63.54% which is near the author productivity distribution described by Lotka's law.
