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. 2023 Dec 9;10(1):e23405.
doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e23405. eCollection 2024 Jan 15.

Global scientific trends in healthy aging in the early 21st century: A data-driven scientometric and visualized analysis

Ye Zhang  1   2 , Zhengmin Gu  1 , Yingxin Xu  1   2 , Miao He  1 , Ben S Gerber  3 , Zhongqing Wang  1 , Feifan Liu  3 , Cheng Peng  4
Affiliations

Global scientific trends in healthy aging in the early 21st century: A data-driven scientometric and visualized analysis

Ye Zhang et al. Heliyon. .

Abstract

Background: According to the World Health Organization (WHO), healthy aging is the process of developing and maintaining the functional capacity for health in old age. A rapidly growing number of research studies on healthy aging have been conducted worldwide. The purpose of this research work is to explore global scientific landscape of healthy aging research over the last 22 years.

Methods: Scientific publications on healthy aging from January 1, 2000 to October 11, 2022 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) on October 11, 2022. A total of 6420 publications were included in the scientometric analysis. VOSviewer (1.6.18) was used to conduct scientometric and visualized analysis.

Results: The publication growth rate was 35.68 from 2000 to 2021. The United States of America (USA) led in both productivity and citations. PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA was prominent in terms of both the highest citation count and the highest average citation count. The National Institute on Aging (NIA) and Evans, Michele K. were the most influential organization and author, respectively. Research hotspots in healthy aging were identified based on the co-occurrence analysis of keywords: (1) physical activity and mental health of older adults; (2) diseases impacting the health and lifespan of older adults; and (3) neuroscience. Our analysis indicates that gut microbiota, loneliness, frailty, mitochondria and resilience were the emerging themes in healthy aging research.

Conclusions: The quantity of annual publications on healthy aging has rapidly increased over the past 22 years, especially during 2018-2021. This analysis identified the status, trends, hot topics, and frontiers of healthy aging research. These findings will help researchers quickly understand the global representation of healthy aging research, influence resource dissemination, promote international collaborations, guide policy formulation, and improve health services for older adults.

Keywords: Data visualization; Healthy aging; Older adults; Scientometric analysis; VOSviewer.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
The research framework of healthy aging.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The annual number of publications on healthy aging from 2000 to 2021.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
The global distribution of leading countries/regions (at least 10 publications) on healthy aging.
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
The overlay visualization map of leading research journals on healthy aging.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
The co-authorship network map of leading research institutions on healthy aging.
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
The co-authorship network map of leading research authors on healthy aging.
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
The co-occurrence network map of keywords on healthy aging.
Fig. 8
Fig. 8
The overlay visualization map of keywords on healthy aging.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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