JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Modern neurosurgery is a relatively young discipline characterized by fineness and complexity. In recent years, neurosurgery in China has made continuous developments and long-term progress, and outstanding discoveries have been made in many aspects.

Objective:

This scientometric investigation aimed to comprehensively provide insight into the development trend of domestic research on subjects such as neurosurgery in China and visually show how it has evolved.

Methods:

The PubMed database was searched to retrieve relevant articles published from 1988 to 2018 from neurosurgery institutions in China. The information and keywords of each article were collected after filtering. Co-word analysis was performed on the papers’ keywords using BibExcel software, and a time distribution matrix of coexisting keywords was established with R software. Co-words were clustered according to their growth rate within years and visually presented by a mountain plot and a heatmap by applying the gCLUTO software package. Trends and potential subspecialties were identified. Each topic under the discipline of neurosurgery represented by each pair of coexisting keywords from publications or funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) in the period from 2011 to 2018 was collected and analyzed with SangerBox software.

Results:

Within the 15,972 publications on neurosurgery in China, co-word analysis was performed on all the papers’ keywords. Diagnostic Imaging was found to coexist the most with other keywords. Reflected by visualization methods, Cluster 0, represented by Diagnostic Image with Retrospective Study, contains emerging topics of great developmental potential. This finding suggests that, with a significant increase in recent years, Cluster 0 may become a hotspot of neurosurgical research in the future. It was also found that the developmental trend of China’s neurosurgical research is highly correlated with NSFC funding acquisition.

Conclusions:

An analysis of co-occurring keywords more unequivocally elucidated each specific category under neurosurgery. Results from the co-word and visualized analyses provide insight into the emerging research topics of vital importance and a reference for neurosurgeons and researchers for future investigations. In this study, our analysis strategy based on co-word biclustering clearly shows the current situation of the development of academic subjects and provides a reliable strategy for bibliometric analysis.