Abstract. Medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) are of interest for human uses from the prehistoric times to the present day. Importance and demand for medicinal and aromatic plants are always continuous. The plant-based drugs, health products, pharmaceuticals, food additives, and cosmetics may contribute to economics for the people living in rural areas as an alternative economic value chain for developing countries. The strategy and priority for selection of some elite plants for their conservation, cultivation, processing, and standardization may promote a new way of livelihood in rural areas. However, quantitative data are lacking on the profile of published researches regarding rural development and MAPs across the world. The object of the study was to examine the profile of original and review articles under the topic of rural development using bibliometric analysis. The VOSviewer tool was used to visualize the results. The documents including "rural development in "Article title, Abstract, Keywords", but limited to containing the topic "medicinal and aromatic plants" were extracted from the Scopus database. Briefly, the research was done using rural development in "Article title, Abstract, Keywords" and then 70,745 documents were retrieved. The second step was limitation of the results to "medicinal and aromatic plants". In this context, 113 documents relevant and available peer-reviewed publications were analysed. According to the systematic analysis, 4169 terms, 346 authors, 384 keywords and 56 countries were determined. The annual trends of publications in the field of the research, considering the number of documents, number of authors, levels of collaborations among authors and countries, yearly publications and core publishing journals were analysed. Along with the results, medicinal plants, Himalaya, conservation, Ethnobotany, Nepal, traditional knowledge, rural development, sustainable development, domestication, Ethnomedicine, livelihood, non-timber forest products, value chain and marketing are of the most pronounced keywords and the discussion was made on those keywords. Of these studies, India, the United States, Italy, Nepal and South Africa were the predominant five countries in dissemination of the documents. Finally, the study was concluded with future outlooks and recommendations.