Describing and mapping scientific articles on alcohol globally for the period 2010–2021: a bibliometric analysis

ObjectivesTo describe and map scientific literature related to alcohol consumption, its determinants, governance, harm and control policies by publication output, author affiliations, funding, countries of study and research themes.DesignBibliometric analysis using performance analysis and science mapping techniques.Data sourcesScientific articles.Eligibility criteriaIndexed scientific articles published between 1 January 2010 and 31 December 2021 with an English abstract focused on alcohol consumption, its determinants, harms, governance and control policies.Data extraction and synthesisSearches were run in Web of Science and PubMed. Performance metrics were analysed using descriptive statistics. Keywords were used for science mapping in a deductive approach to cluster articles by five main research themes. The ‘policy response’ theme was further analysed by six subthemes.Results4553 articles were included in the analysis. Three out of four articles (3479/4553, 76.4%) were authored solely by authors affiliated with HIC institutions. One in five articles (906/4553, 19.9%) had at least one author affiliated to an institution from an upper-middle-income, middle-income or low-income country context. Governments, followed by research institutions, were the predominant funding source. Half (53.1%) studied a single country and, of these, 77.0% were high-income countries (HICs). Australia, USA and UK were the most studied countries, together accounting for 44.9% (975/2172) of country-specific articles. Thematically, ‘consumption’ was most studied, and ‘alcohol determinants’, least. ‘Policy response’ articles were predominately conducted in HIC contexts.ConclusionsAlthough the attributable harm of alcohol is known to affect more significantly lower-income and middle-income countries, scientific publications primarily report on HIC contexts by authors from HICs. Research themes reflect known cost-effective policy actions, though skewed towards HICs and a focus on consumption. The implementation of context-specific alcohol control policies requires addressing the determinants of the uneven geographical and thematic distribution of research.