The paper analyses 2339 research papers appearing in 330 journals covered in Medicinal and Aromatic Plants Abstracts, India (1983) on the basis of their broad subject fields such as agronomy, phytochemistry, pharmacology and clinical research; their country of origin; plant genera and their species; and by type of investigation. Under each of the broad subject fields and major genera, an attempt has been made to identify the nature and focus of research in different countries through minimal level content analysis. Special focus of the paper has been the analysis of Indian publication output.