Citation patterns and trends of systematic reviews about mindfulness

•A citation analysis on the topics of mindfulness and their impacts on the literature is proposed.•The growth over the article life showed that clinical reviews had higher cumulative citation growth.•Increasing interest has been directed towards the efficacy of the mindfulness on health care professionals and caregivers.

ObjectivesWe performed a citation analysis of the literature about mindfulness aimed at describing the most significant topics and the impact of more relevant papers.MethodsWe classified 128 systematic reviews about mindfulness-based intervention retrieved in Scopus according to their object, the population included and the type of mindfulness proposed. The citation counting was reported. The cumulative citation numbers per chronological years and article life were analyzed thorough a linear regression model.Results1) We observed a general increase in the number of reviews published from 2003 to 2016; 2) two reviews collected the 33% of the overall citations; 3) citation counting for clinical and mixed population collected the 90% of total citations; 4) clinical reviews had higher cumulative citation per publication/year growth.ConclusionsAs mindfulness research advances, higher attention should be given to the mechanisms by which mindfulness interventions work so as to provide fruitful insights for future research.