Visualized analysis of trends and hotspots in global oral microbiome research: A bibliometric study

Abstract

The oral microbiome contains numerous bacteria, which directly or indirectly participate in various human functions and continuously exchange signals and substances with the human body, significantly affecting human life cycle, health, and disease. This study aimed to conduct bibliometric studies on the scientific outputs of global oral microbiome research by Citespace software. The data were obtained from the Thomson Reuters' Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), from the first relevant literature published until December 31st, 2019, and a total of 2225 articles and reviews were identified. The top country and institutions are the United States and Harvard University. Keywords analysis showed that periodontal disease, oral microbes, and dental plaque are research hotspots. The burst word analysis indicates that early childhood caries, squamous cell carcinoma, gut microbiome, Helicobacter pylori, Candida albicans, and dysbiosis are likely to become the research hotspots of the next era. We also recommend the use of knowledge mapping methods to track specific knowledge areas efficiently and objectively regularly, which can accurately identify hotspots and frontiers and provide valuable information for practitioners in the field, including related scientists, students, journals, and editors.

Keywords: CiteSpace; WoSCC; bibliometric; knowledge map; oral microbiome.

FIGURE 1

The overall schematic diagram of this study. Topic search (TS): “oral microbiome” or “oral microbiota” or “oral microflora” or “oral microbial community” or “oral microbial communities” or “dental microbiome” or “dental microbiota” or “dental microflora” or “dental microbial community” or “dental microbial communities” or “salivary microbiome” or “salivary microbiota” or “salivary microflora” or “salivary microbial community” or “salivary microbial communities” or “mouth microbiome” or “mouth microbiota” or “mouth microflora” or “mouth microbial community” or “mouth microbial communities”

FIGURE 2

Analysis of time, subject categories, countries, and institutions. A, Trends in the number of scholarly original articles and reviews related to oral microbiome from 1959 to 2019. The green arrows separate three different stages according to the volume of publications. B, Pie chart of subject categories related to oral microbiome literatures from 1959 to 2019. C, Geographic distribution of countries on oral microbiome publications between 1959 and 2019. The colors of countries are corresponding to the frequencies according to the legend at the right bottom, and the top 10 countries and their frequencies are marked. D, Top 20 institutions related to oral microbiome literatures from 1959 to 2019. The frequencies are listed after the name of institutions, and different colors are corresponding to different continents

FIGURE 3

Analysis of authors. A, Top 20 authors on the oral microbiome literatures between 1959 and 2019. B, Layer of collaborative connection information of authors who published articles and reviews related to the oral microbiome from 1959 to 2019, and the image was generated by Python. Circular nodes represent authors, and the sizes of them are in proportion to the frequencies, and the colors of them are corresponding to the years in which they first published literature on the oral microbiome. The widths of lines are proportional to the number of publications that two authors both participated in. C, Layer of cluster information of authors who published articles and reviews related to the oral microbiome from 1959 to 2019, and the picture was produced by Python. The sequence number of main sub‐networks and cluster top terms are marked. D, A visual clustering network of authors published literature on oral microbiome between 1959 and 2019. Circular nodes represent authors, and the sizes of them are in proportion to the frequencies. The colors of links are corresponding to the year. The purple rims of circles represent the high centralities, and the red circles mean the high strength of bursts. The sequence number of sub‐networks and cluster top terms are marked in the central area. The larger the number of authors includes in the cluster, the more the label color becomes warm

FIGURE 4

Analysis of co‐cited authors, journals, and cited journals. A, Top 20 co‐cited authors on the oral microbiome literatures between 1959 and 2019. According to the parameters above, 704 cited‐authors structured the network, and the top 20 are listed. Burst measures a sudden change of items or citations, centrality quantifies the importance of the node's position in the network, and sigma is a combination of burst and centrality. B, Top 10 journals in terms of frequency. C, Top 20 cited journals in the oral microbiome publications between 1959 and 2019. Impact factor list is according to the one published in June 2019

FIGURE 5

The keywords with the strongest citation bursts of articles on oral microbiome publications from 1959 to 2019. The time interval is depicted as a blue line and the period that represents a burst keyword as a red line, indicating the beginning and the ending of the time interval of each burst