Research data · Disease model and test

Open field in pain conditions research

From 2021 to 2025, 199 animal research papers on pain conditions mentioned the open field in their title or abstract.

That is 2.4 times the 83 papers of 2011 to 2015. Between the same two periods, the papers on pain conditions that mention any of the 90 tests we count grew more slowly, to 1.1 times as many.

199 papers on pain conditions from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the open field
8% of the papers on pain conditions that mention any test mention the open field
5% of the papers that mention the open field are on pain conditions
2.4 times as many papers as in 2011 to 2015

Papers by year

Animal research papers on pain conditions that mention the open field, by year, 2001 to 2026

The 2026 bar counts papers added to PubMed by November 8, 2026.

  • Papers in a full year
  • 2026 so far
Show the counts for each year
Papers by year
YearPapers
20011
20024
20036
20043
20054
20064
20075
20087
20097
201010
201112
201215
201317
201413
201526
201623
201713
201821
201922
202028
202138
202245
202334
202433
202549
2026 (part year)50

Papers on pain conditions that mention the open field fell from 38 in 2021 to 33 in 2024, then rose to 49 in 2025. Part of this dip may come from PubMed's indexing rather than from fewer studies. Where PubMed has indexed a paper, we take its disease models from that indexing. Otherwise PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, has to find the disease in the title or abstract, or the paper is not counted here. Papers that PubMed indexed under the subject heading Animals also fell and rose, from 200,221 in 2021 to 156,447 in 2023 and 235,479 in 2025.

Which species the papers used

Each bar is a share of the 199 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Mouse
107 papers 54%
Rat
93 papers 47%
Other animals
3 papers 2%
Zebrafish
2 papers 1%

“Other animals” counts papers that use none of the species this chart names.

Tests mentioned alongside the open field

Each bar is one test, with how many of the 199 papers also mention it, and what share that is. Of these papers, 29 (15%) mention no other test.

The 12 tests these papers mention most

56 papers 28%
50 papers 25%
38 papers 19%
29 papers 15%
24 papers 12%
16 papers 8%
16 papers 8%
10 papers 5%

Which papers count

A paper counts here when it is animal research, mentions the open field in its title or abstract, and studies pain conditions.

We tell whether a paper studies pain conditions from its MeSH terms, the subject headings the National Library of Medicine adds when it indexes a paper. For a paper without MeSH terms, PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, has to find the disease in the title or abstract. A paper can count under more than one disease model. A paper that mentions the test only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low.

The page on pain conditions research names the subject headings we count as pain conditions. Download the test list for the search terms we used for the open field, or the paper list for the PubMed ID of every paper behind these counts. Our main page, Behavioral tests in published research, has the full method and each source's terms of use.

More tests and disease models

Every pairing of a disease model and a test with 30 or more papers from 2021 to 2025 has a page like this one.

The page on the open field counts all the papers that mention it, whatever they study. The page on pain conditions research ranks the tests by their papers on pain conditions.

How to cite

APA

ConductScience. (2026, November 10). Open field in pain conditions research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/pain/open-field

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_pain_open_field_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Open field in pain conditions research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/pain/open-field},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

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