Hotspots and trends in ophthalmology in recent 5 years: Bibliometric analysis in 2017-2021

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the hotspots and research trends of ophthalmology research.

Method: Ophthalmology research literature published between 2017 and 2021 was obtained in the Web of Science Core Collection database. The bibliometric analysis and network visualization were performed with the VOSviewer and CiteSpace. Publication-related information, including publication volume, citation counts, countries, journals, keywords, subject categories, and publication time, was analyzed.

Results: A total of 10,469 included ophthalmology publications had been cited a total of 7,995 times during the past 5 years. The top countries and journals for the number of publications were the United States and the Ophthalmology. The top 25 global high-impact documents had been identified using the citation ranking. Keyword co-occurrence analysis showed that the hotspots in ophthalmology research were epidemiological characteristics and treatment modalities of ocular diseases, artificial intelligence and fundus imaging technology, COVID-19-related telemedicine, and screening and prevention of ocular diseases. Keyword burst analysis revealed that "neural network," "pharmacokinetics," "geographic atrophy," "implementation," "variability," "adverse events," "automated detection," and "retinal images" were the research trends of research in the field of ophthalmology through 2021. The analysis of the subject categories demonstrated the close cooperation relationships that existed between different subject categories, and collaborations with non-ophthalmology-related subject categories were increasing over time in the field of ophthalmology research.

Conclusions: The hotspots in ophthalmology research were epidemiology, prevention, screening, and treatment of ocular diseases, as well as artificial intelligence and fundus imaging technology and telemedicine. Research trends in ophthalmology research were artificial intelligence, drug development, and fundus diseases. Knowledge from non-ophthalmology fields is likely to be more involved in ophthalmology research.

Keywords: bibliometric analysis; hotspots; literature; ophthalmology; research trend.

Figure 1

Global distribution of research output. (A) Annual publications and citations of ophthalmology research from 2017 to 2021. (B) Top 10 countries in terms of total publications. (C) Country cooperation networks. (D) Top 10 journals by total publication volume of ophthalmology research in a 5-year period.

Figure 2

Ophthalmology research hotspots analysis. The keywords formed four clusters, which were differentiated by color in the diagram, with the same color being the same cluster. The keyword size indicated the number of occurrences of the keyword, whereas the thickness and distance of the connecting lines between the keywords indicated the frequency of co-occurrence between the two keywords.

Figure 3

Ophthalmology research trends analysis. (A) Keyword burst analysis. The red line indicates the year in which the burst of the corresponding keyword began and ended. (B) Subject category analysis. The larger subject categories indicate their greater frequency and importance, and the distance between subject categories indicates how closely they collaborate. The lines between subject categories indicate the collaboration between the subject categories at either end, with the color of the different lines representing the collaboration time in the different subject categories and the thickness representing the degree of collaboration closeness. The color of the temporal rings represents the occurrence of that subject category in different years, the thicker the corresponding temporal rings, the more frequently it occurs, with the time scale at the bottom right.