Abstract Background and aims The recent economic crisis started in the USA in 2008 but quickly had worldwide impact. Ireland, Greece, and Portugal were in economic distress in 2009 and received rescue monetary packages from the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the following years. Meanwhile, the economic recovery has begun for those countries, but at different paces. The aim of the present study was to evaluate if the economic crisis influenced pain research outcomes, by performing a bibliometric analysis based on the ISI Web of Science to evaluate the evolution of the scientific production and performance in the field of pain research between 1997 and 2017. Methods Articles search was conducted using the ISI Web of Science, search keywords “pain or nocicep*”, between 1997 and 2017, and one author affiliated in an Irish, Greek or Portuguese institution. The total number of published articles per country, total citations, h-index, document types and authors’ institution were tabulated to determine the quantity and quality of the publications in this field. Results The search retrieved 2,368 publications over the 20 years’ period, increasing from 26 in 1997 to 230 in 2017. The number of Irish publications per year increased steadily along the studied period, while the number of Greek publications stabilized from 2008 onward and Portuguese publications started to increase only in 2007 but declined slightly after 2014. In total, Irish authors published 1,143 articles, Greek authors 624 and Portuguese authors 618. There were nine articles with more than 100 citations, and Irish publications had a higher h-index (52) than Greek’s (45) or Portuguese’s (36) publications. Ireland had the highest number of pain publications per capita, but in 2016 Portugal had the lowest cost per publication, as measured by the GDP per capita per publication (in 1997 Portugal had the highest cost). The three major research fields of the publications were neurosciences/neurology (19%), general internal medicine (16%) and anaesthesiology (13%), and the affiliation institutions were mostly universities or universities hospitals. Conclusions The number of Irish, Greek, and Portuguese pain publications increased between 1997 and 2017, but at different paces. It appears that the economic crisis had no impact on the rate of pain publications in Ireland, had a delayed impact in Portugal, and affected mostly Greek pain scientific research. This may be related to the fact that Greece was the country that received more rescue packages and where the economic crisis was deepest and lasted longer. Implications Economics and scientific production have a mutual influence: usually research investment decreases in recession times (reducing grants and scientific employment), but health scientific production can improve health and quality of life and also benefit the economy. So in crisis periods, governments should create means to protect and foster scientific work.