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. 2023 Jan 9:12:1024179.
doi: 10.3389/fonc.2022.1024179. eCollection 2022.

Research landscape and trends of melanoma immunotherapy: A bibliometric analysis

Yanhao Liu  1 , Lan Yu  1 , Yanjiao Liang  1 , Xi Cheng  1 , Shu Jiang  1 , Haiming Yu  1 , Zhen Zhang  1 , Linlin Lu  1 , Baozhen Qu  1 , Yuxian Chen  1 , Xiaotao Zhang  1
Affiliations

Research landscape and trends of melanoma immunotherapy: A bibliometric analysis

Yanhao Liu et al. Front Oncol. .

Abstract

Background: Immunotherapy for lung cancer has been a hot research area for years. This bibliometric analysis was intended to present research trends on melanoma immunotherapy.

Method: On April 1, 2022, the authors identified 2,109 papers on melanoma immunotherapy using the Web of Science and extracted their general information and the total number of citations. The authors then conducted a bibliometric analysis to present the research landscape, clarify the research trends, and determine the most cited papers (top-papers) as well as major journals on melanoma immunotherapy. Subsequently, recent research hotspots were identified by analyzing the latest articles in major journals.

Results: The total and median number of citations of these 2,109 papers on melanoma immunotherapy was 137,686 and 11, respectively. "Improved survival with ipilimumab in patients with metastatic melanoma" by Hodi et al. was the most cited paper (9,824 citations). Among the journals, the top-paper number (16), average citations per paper (2,510.7), and top-papers rate (100%) of New England Journal of Medicine were the highest. Corresponding authors represented the USA took part in most articles (784). Since 2016, the hottest research area has changed from CTLA-4 to PD-1.

Conclusions: This bibliometric analysis comprehensively and quantitatively presents the research trends and hotspots based on 2,109 relevant publications, and further suggests future research directions. The researchers can benefit in selecting journals and in finding potential collaborators. This study can help researchers gain a comprehensive impression of the research landscape, historical development, and current hotspots in melanoma immunotherapy and can provide inspiration for future research.

Keywords: CTLA-4; PD1/PDL1; adoptive cell therapy; bibliometric analysis; clinical trials; immunotherapy; melanoma; tumor mutation burden.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) Publication and citation number from 2010 to 2022 of the papers on melanoma immunotherapy. The green line indicates the total citations of papers published each year. The orange line indicates the total citations of all papers each year. (B) Paper numbers and average citations per paper of the top-10 productive journals. (C) Top-10 journals with the most citations per paper per year. (D) The dual-map overlay of journal categories. The left nodes represent citing journals and the right nodes represent cited journals. The curves represent the citation relationship.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Bibliographic coupling of journals with at least five papers related to melanoma immunotherapy. (B) Bibliographic coupling of journals with top-papers related to melanoma immunotherapy. The circle size represents the number of papers. The breadth of the curves represents the connection strength. The journals in the same color are of similar research areas.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(A) Paper number and average citations of corresponding authors’ countries. MCP, multiple-country publications; SCP, single-country publications. (B) Network mapping of international collaboration. (C) Visualization world map of paper number and collaboration relationship.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(A) Network visualization of countries with at least five papers related to melanoma immunotherapy. (B) Network visualization of countries with top-papers related to melanoma immunotherapy. The circle size represents the number of papers. The breadth of the curves represents the connection strength.
Figure 5
Figure 5
(A) Network visualization of institutions with at least 20 papers related to melanoma immunotherapy. (B) Network visualization of institutions with at least three top-papers related to melanoma immunotherapy. The circle size represents the number of papers. The breadth of the curves represents the connection strength. The institutions in the same color have stronger collaboration with each other.
Figure 6
Figure 6
(A) Network visualization of authors with at least 15 papers related to melanoma immunotherapy. (B) Network visualization of authors with at least three top-papers related to melanoma immunotherapy. The circle size represents the number of papers. The breadth of the curves represents the connection strength. The authors in the same color have stronger collaboration with each other.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Top 25 keywords with the strongest citation bursts in papers on melanoma immunotherapy. The green line represents the timeline and the red line on the timeline represents the burst duration from the start year to the end year.
Figure 8
Figure 8
(A) Network visualization of keywords that occurred at least 10 times in the papers. (B) Network visualization of keywords that occurred at least twice in the top-papers. (C) Network visualization of keywords that occurred at least twice in papers published in major journals between 2020 and 2022. The circle size represents the number of papers. The breadth of the curves represents the connection strength.
Figure 9
Figure 9
(A) Publication and citation number of papers evaluating different therapies. The node size represents the paper number and the color represents the average citations per paper. (B) The percentage of papers evaluating different therapies each year. (C) The timeline view for co-cited references related to melanoma immunotherapy. The node size represents the citation number of the reference. The curves between the nodes indicated co-citation relationships. Yellow nodes represent new papers and red nodes represent old ones.
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