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Record W4407872535 · doi:10.1097/md.0000000000041618

Bibliometric analysis of research on manual therapy for low back pain from 2013 to 2023

2025· article· en· W4407872535 on OpenAlexaboutno aff
Yi Guo, Zhichao Gong, Xiaowei Liu, Kun Ai, Wu Li, Jiangshan Li

Bibliographic record

VenueMedicine · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicMusculoskeletal pain and rehabilitation
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsMedicineLow back painManual therapyPhysical therapyBibliometricsWeb of scienceMEDLINEAlternative medicineMeta-analysisLibrary sciencePathology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

BACKGROUND: Low back pain (LBP) is one of the most common symptoms prompting patients to seek treatment. Manual therapy is widely used to treat LBP. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of bibliometric analyses examining the worldwide utilization of manual therapy for the treatment of LBP. METHODS: This research used the Online Bibliometric overview Platform website (https://bibliometric.com), CiteSpace (6.2.R4), and VOSviewer (1.6.19) to provide a comprehensive analysis of the current status and prospective developments in the field. The Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) database was searched for publications from August 1, 2013, to August 1, 2023 on manual therapy of low back pain. RESULTS: Among the identified articles, 488 fit the criteria. The number of papers on manual therapy for LBP has progressively risen over in the past 10 years, whereas the average number of citations of these papers has decreased. The leading countries producing publications on this discipline were the USA, Canada, and China. There were 345 authors of the studies, with Christine M. Goertz having the most publications. The University of Southern Denmark was the institution that contributed the most to the field. The Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics published many of the research papers in this field. Keyword analysis showed that the relationship between low back pain, spinal manipulation, and management has been present throughout the development of this research area. CONCLUSIONS: Spinal manipulation, management, randomized controlled trials, Physical therapy, care and disability are the current research hotspots in the treatment of LBP with manual therapy. In addition, research on complementary medicine and clinical practice guidelines may become an important trend in the future.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.014
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.102
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch, Bibliometrics
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.986
Threshold uncertainty score0.071

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0140.102
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0050.006
Bibliometrics0.1890.305
Science and technology studies0.0010.001
Scholarly communication0.0050.003
Open science0.0020.003
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0060.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.059
GPT teacher head0.448
Teacher spread0.389 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

Study designNot applicable
DomainMethods
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations2
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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