A bibliometrics analysis and visualization of osteoimmunology on osteoarthritis studies

Abstract

Background: Osteoarthritis (OA), the most prevalent form of arthritis, which affects up to 15% of the adult population. The work presented in this paper focuses on the analysis of the publications on osteoimmunology of OA. The purpose of this paper is to provide inspiration for future research on osteoimmunology of OA.

Methods: We extracted all of the English publications relevant to osteoimmunology of OA published from 1991-2020 from the Web of Science. SPSS, GraphPad Prism, Citespace, and VOSviewer were utilized to collect and analyze the publication trends in osteoimmunology of OA.

Results: We identified a total number of 1,004 publications with a total number of citations of 35,675 by October 31, 2020. Most publications came from China (26.8%). The United States ranked second, but its average number of citations and H index ranked best (10,130 citations and 55 H-index). Shandong University is the main center of institutional cooperation. Most papers related to osteoimmunology of OA were published in the journal of Osteoarthritis and Cartilage. In this field, TAK PP published the most papers (15), while Kotake, S's article was cited the most frequently (1,195). As presented in Figure 6, the 70 keywords, defined as terms that appeared more than 50 times in all papers, were classified into four clusters molecular research, human research, animal research and cell research. Research on cytokines and pathways is the new trend in Molecular research.

Conclusion: The current status and global trend of osteoimmunology of OA revealed by this study indicates that there is a strong possibility that the number of papers will increase in the coming year, and the research on cytokines as well as pathways would be the next hot topic.

Keywords: Bibliometrics; immune cell; osteoarthritis; osteoblast; osteoclast; osteoimmunology.

Figure 1

Flow diagram of the inclusion process. The detailed process of screening and enrollment.

Figure 2

Contributions of different countries/regions to the research field regarding osteoimmunology on OA. A. The number of publications, citation frequency (×0.05), H-index (×5) and GDP (×5, per trillion dollar) in the top 10 countries or regions; B. The number of publications worldwide and the time course of relative research interest of osteoimmunology on OA.

Figure 3

The cooperation network of countries/regions in osteoimmunology on OA. The cooperative relations between countries/regions can be visualized. A. The cooperation relations between countries and regions. B. The network of cooperative relations between nations/regions.

Figure 4

The model fitting curves of growth trends of publications associated with osteoimmunology on OA. A. China; B. USA; C. Japan; D. England; E. Germany; F. Global.

Figure 5

The distribution and association of institutions engaged in research of osteoimmunology on OA. A. The network of institutions by Citespace; B, C. The network of institutions by VOSviewer.

Figure 6

The co-occurrence analysis of all keywords in publications of osteoimmunology on OA. A. Mapping of the keywords in the area of osteoimmunology on OA. The words were divided into 4 clusters in accordance with different colors generated by default, “molecular research” (left in red), “human research” (right in green), and “animal research” (up in blue), “cell research” (below in yellow). Size of the circle represented the frequency of keywords; B. Distribution of keywords was presented under occupation to the average time of application. The blue color represented early application and yellow color standing for late application. Two keywords were considered co-occurred if the same line in the corpus file. Smaller distance between two keywords individually related higher co-occurrences of the keyword.

Figure 7

The temporal distribution and clustering of the literature. A. The top 16 keywords with the strongest citation bursts during 2009 to 2020. The red bars represent frequently cited keywords during this time period. The green bars represent infrequently cited keywords; B. The size of the ball reflects the heat of the literature; C. The dual-map overlay of journal, which reflects the clustering of keyword sources.