A bibliometric analysis of homosexuality research in SAARC countries

Abstract

Homosexuality, which was considered to be deviant sexualbehaviour, has been recognized as normal sexual behaviorin recent years. Despite this change in scientific viewpoint,there are still many taboos centered around this entity. Eventhe research concerning homosexuality seemingly suffereddiscrimination. This research attempts to understand thetrend of research in homosexuality in the SAARC countriestodate.We did a literature search in the PubMed databasesince the time of inception till date (28th September 2021)by using the search terms: homosexuality [tiab] and(Bangladesh [tiab] OR India [tiab] or Maldives [tiab] ORAfghanistan [tiab] OR Pakistan [tiab] or Sri Lanka [tiab] ORBhutan [tiab] or Nepal [tiab]). A total of 67 articles werefound from the database. Most articles were published inthe Journal of homosexuality (n=4). The articles werepublished between 1976 to 2020, with the highest numberof publications (n=5) in 2009 and 2018. The averagenumber of authors per article was 2.433, and the averagenumber of citations per paper was 2.866. Thoughhomosexuality is a highly sensitive issue, there is a paucityof research in this field in the SAARC countries.