Objective: This study conducts a bibliometric analysis of reference interval in clinical laboratory research to evaluate scholarly output.Methods: Articles published since 2000 on the term “reference value” and “reference interval” in the field of the clinical laboratory were found in the Web of Science Core Collection SCIE index. VOS viewer and Mi-crosoft Excel were employed to perform bibliometric and visual analyses.Results:The study analysed 664 articles on reference intervals in 85 countries, with the United States lead-ing with 120 publications. The top organizations contributing to the research were the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Toronto, followed by Yamaguchi University, the University of Copenhagen, and the University of Southern Denmark. The data also showed a significant increase in research funding distribution, with the United States Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan, and Canadian Institutes of Health Research holding notable records. The statis-tics indicated a notable rise in citations, with 2021 recording the highest number of citations. The study also highlighted the importance of keywords in the dataset, with "reference intervals" appearing 166 times and "reference interval" appearing 97 times.Conclusion: This study provides a systematic and objective perspective for evaluating the characteristics of publications on reference intervals in clinical laboratory research and for generating evidence-based scienti-fic insights.
Uşaklıgil et al. (2026) studied this question.