REVIEW Natural products in diabetes research: quantitative literature analysis Andy Wai Kan Yeung a , Nikolay T. Tzvetkov b,c , Alessandra Durazzo d , Massimo Lucarini d , Eliana B. Souto e,f , Antonello Santini g , Ren-You Gan h , Artur Jozwik i , Weronika Grzybek i , Jaroslaw O. Horba nczuk i , Andrei Mocan j,k , Javier Echeverr  ıa l , Dongdong Wang i,m,n and Atanas G. Atanasov c,i,o,p a Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, Applied Oral Sciences and Community Dental Care, Faculty of Dentistry, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China; b Department of Biochemical Pharmacology and Drug Design, Institute of Molecular Biology “Roumen Tsanev”, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria; c Institute of Neurobiology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria; d CREA-Research Centre for Food and Nutrition, Rome, Italy; e Department of Pharmaceutical Technology, Faculty of Pharmacy, Polo das Ci ^ encias da Sa ude, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal; f CEB-Centre of Biological Engineering, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal; g Department of Pharmacy, University of Napoli Federico II, Napoli, Italy; h Institute of Urban Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Chengdu, China; i Institute of Genetics and Animal Biotechnology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Magdalenka, Poland; j Department of Pharmaceutical Botany, Faculty of Pharmacy, “IuliuHat¸ieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; k Laboratory of Chromatography, Institute of Advanced Horticulture Research of Transylvania, University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Cluj-Napoca, Romania; l Departamento de Ciencias del Ambiente, Facultad de Qu  ımica y Biolog  ıa, Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile; m Institute of Clinical Chemistry, University Hospital Zurich, Schlieren, Switzerland; n The Second Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Guiyang, China; o Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital Health and Patient Safety, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; p Department of Pharmacognosy, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria ABSTRACT The current study aimed to identify which natural products and which research directions are related to the major contributors to academic journals for diabetes therapy. Bibliometric data were extracted from the Web of Science online database using the search string TOPIC ¼ (‘‘natural product à ’ OR ‘‘natural com- pound à ’ OR ‘‘natural molecule à ’ OR ‘phytochemical à ’ OR ‘‘secondary metabolite à ’) AND TS ¼ (‘diabet à ’) and analysed by a bibliometric software, VOSviewer. The search yielded 3694 publi- cations, which were collectively cited 80,791 times, with an H- index of 117 and 21.9 citations per publication on average. The top-contributing countries were India, the USA, China, South Korea and Brazil. Curcumin, flavanone, resveratrol, carotenoid, pol- yphenols, flavonol, flavone and berberine were the most fre- quently cited natural products or compound classes. Our results provide a brief overview of the major directions of natural prod- uct research in diabetes up to now and hint on promising ave- nues for future research. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 3 June 2020 Accepted 28 August 2020 KEYWORDS Natural product; phytochemical; diabetes; bibliometric; citation analysis; curcumin; resveratrol CONTACT Andy Wai Kan Yeung ndyeung@hku.hk; Antonello Santini asantini@unina.it; Atanas G. Atanasov atanas.atanasov@univie.ac.at ß 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group NATURAL PRODUCT RESEARCH 2021, VOL. 35, NO. 24, 5813–5827 https://doi.org/10.1080/14786419.2020.1821019