We conducted a comprehensive analysis of research papers on ginseng to provide an overview of global ginseng research. The qualitative and quantitative interpretation was carried out using collected data of Panax species and six other herbal plants from the Web of ScienceTM Core Collection. We summarized and classified them by country/territory and institutions based on the corresponding author's institution. The first ginseng paper appeared in 1905 and since then, 8,090 papers have been published until 2019. Among them 7,385 papers were published in recent 24 years from 1996 to 2019. It was 18 papers in 1980, 53 in 1990, 97 in 2000, 369 in 2010, and increased to 678 in 2019. Proportion of ginseng papers in total number of scientific papers were also greatly increased, namely, 0.0008% in 1970, 0.0044% in 1980, 0.101% in 1990, 0.0141% in 2000, and 0.0422% in 2019. 7,099 original research papers including notes and 286 review papers were published during last 24 years. Total 3,286 institutions in 78 countries and 1,274 journals contributed to the publication of ginseng papers. Korea was the leading country in ginseng papers up to 2013, however, China took over the top from 2014. Chinese institutions contributed 40.3% of total papers followed by Korea (34.7%), USA (6.0%), Japan (4.1%), and Canada (2.9%). Ginseng was the most studied medicinal plant during last 24 years followed by tea, garlic, ginkgo, and ginger whose number of papers were 6,499, 3,641, 2,590, and 1,945, respectively.