Comparing keywords plus of WOS and author keywords: A case study of patient adherence research

Bibliometric analysis based on literature in the Web of Science (WOS) has become an increasingly popular method for visualizing the structure of scientific fields. Keywords Plus and Author Keywords are commonly selected as units of analysis, despite the limited research evidence demonstrating the effectiveness of Keywords Plus. This study was conceived to evaluate the efficacy of Keywords Plus as a parameter for capturing the content and scientific concepts presented in articles. Using scientific papers about patient adherence that were retrieved from WOS, a comparative assessment of Keywords Plus and Author Keywords was performed at the scientific field level and the document level, respectively. Our search yielded more Keywords Plus terms than Author Keywords, and the Keywords Plus terms were more broadly descriptive. Keywords Plus is as effective as Author Keywords in terms of bibliometric analysis investigating the knowledge structure of scientific fields, but it is less comprehensive in representing an article's content.