Research progress of E-cigarette-A bibliometric analysis during 2010-2022

Abstract

Introduction: Electronic cigarettes have been widely used all over the world. It is not clear what the advantages and disadvantages of a novelty in daily life are that is attracting increasing attention. Up to now, no bibliometric studies on e-cigarettes have been published in databases. Therefore, we are willing to explore directions and research hotspots in this emerging field by using bibliometrics to analyze research areas, publishing countries and institutions, high-output authors, and future trends of e-cigarettes in recent years. Compared with the traditional review, the bibliometric study can provide some information on core journals, articles, researchers, institutions, and countries concentrating on this topic to guide experimentation strategies and funding decisions.

Methods: A bibliometric analysis was performed by CiteSpace and VOSviewer up to April 2022 in the core collection of Web of Science. HistCite, VOSviewer, CiteSpace, and the R-based Bibliometrix 4.1.0 packages were used to analyze literature information, including year, journal, country, institute, author, keywords, and co-cited references.

Results: Research related to e-cigarettes has proliferated since its inception around 2010. A total of 2,302 studies were published in 689 journals by our search method. Nicotine and tobacco research was the most published journal. The most prolific country was the United States, while the most influential institution was Virginia Commonwealth University. Eight of the top ten authors were from the United States. Oxidative stress, high school students, smoking cessation, delivery, behavioral economics, and exposure were the top topics.

Conclusions: As an emerging social phenomenon, research on e-cigarettes has increased significantly over the past decade, particularly from 2015 to 2020. The top three core journals are Nicotine and Tobacco Research, the International Journal of Environmental Research, and Public Health. Eisenberg-Thomas had published numerous articles on e-cigarettes that had been co-cited in many papers. Oxidative stress, high school students, and smoking cessation are the top three areas of e-cigarette-related research, which were also important areas for further investigation.

Keywords: bibliometric; cigarette; citation; keywords; publication.

Figure 1

(A) Global publication trend analysis of e-cigarette-related publications; (B) TGCS, TLCS, and growth rate of e-cigarette literature.

Figure 2

Country analysis of published e-cigarette research literature. (A) country analysis of published literature worldwide; (B) trends in the number of publications in the top 10 publishing countries over the years; (C) radar plot of total literature in the top 10 publishing countries; (D) radar plot of TGCS in the top 10 publishing countries; (E) radar plot of average citations in the top 10 publishing countries; (F) visual cluster analysis of collaboration among publishing countries; (G) time of cooperation in each country visualization analysis graphs.

Figure 3

Visual analysis graphs between active institutions and authors. (A) cluster analysis between posting institutions; (B) timeline analysis of the top 10 posting volume authors; (C) cluster analysis of collaboration between authors.

Figure 4

Visualization of Core Journals. (A) Souce dynamics of top 5 Core Journals. (B) Biplot overlay of article citations for electronic cigarette research.

Figure 5

Visual analysis of co-cited reference analysis. (A) Cluster analysis graph of co-cited references; (B) top 6 clusters and time and intensity distribution; (C) table of the start and end time and power of citation outbreaks for the top 15 references in citation outbreak intensity.

Figure 6

Visual analysis of keywords. (A) timeline analysis after keyword clustering; (B) keyword Sankey evolution diagram of e-cigarette research; (C) representative burst keywords in the top 10 references.

Figure 7

Methods flow chart.