Thymoquinone-related knowledge (1915–2022): A comprehensive bibliometric analysis

Nigella sativa L. and its active component, thymoquinone, attract a lot of scientific attention. However, very few review articles on this issue have been published so far, and no review relied on the method of bibliometrics, which is currently the most prominent technique for citation mapping. This review involves a total of 2072 studies on thymoquinone reported in the Scopus database between 1915 and September 15, 2022. The data obtained were processed using the VOSviewer software, MS Excel, and Scopus Analytic. The review introduces some prospective research areas based on theme mapping, knowledge trending, bibliographic coupling, and keyword co-occurrence networks. The authors, documents, journals, institutions, and countries were ranked based on the knowledge impact and the number of publications. The 2072 selected publications belonged to 7605 scholars, with 3.67 authors per document on average. The average number of citations per document was 68.84. The Phytotherapy Research Journal scored as the top source. M.N. Nagi proved to be the top-cited author with 2076 citations, while Saudi Arabia appeared to be the most productive and cited country. The best-studied areas were represented by such topics as anti-inflammatory properties of thymoquinone, cytokine network, and arthritic disease model. Molecular-based approaches in conjunction with ethno-knowledge may be of assistance in comprehending the cellular mechanisms of thymoquinone and establishing its efficacy against a variety of diseases.