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©The Author(s) 2020. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Bibliometric analysis of subject trends and knowledge structures of gut microbiota
Yuan-Yi Yue, Xin-Yue Fan, Qiang Zhang, Yi-Ping Lu, Si Wu, Shuang Wang, Miao Yu, Chang-Wan Cui, Zheng-Rong Sun
Yuan-Yi Yue, Department of Gastroenterology Medicine, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang 110004, Liaoning Province, China
Xin-Yue Fan, Student Affairs Department, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang 110004, Liaoning Province, China
Qiang Zhang, Department of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang 110004, Liaoning Province
Yi-Ping Lu, Si Wu, Shuang Wang, Miao Yu, Chang-Wan Cui, Zheng-Rong Sun, BioBank, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang 110004, Liaoning Province, China
Author contributions: Yue YY designed the research; Fan XY and Zhang Q did data analysis; Yue YY, Lu YP, Wu S, Wang S, Yu M, and Cui CW prepared the original draft Sun ZR did project administration; All authors reviewed, edited and approved the final version of the manuscript.
Supported by the Liaoning Provincial Key R and D Guidance Plan Project in 2018, No. 2018225009 and the Liaoning Colleges and Universities Basic Research Project, No. LFWK201710.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors declare that they have no competing interests.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Zheng-Rong Sun, PhD, Professor, BioBank, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, No. 36, Sanhao Street, Heping District, Shenyang 110004, Liaoning Province, China. sunzr@sj-hospital.org
Received: April 7, 2020
Peer-review started: April 7, 2020
First decision: April 28, 2020
Revised: May 5, 2020
Accepted: May 30, 2020
Article in press: May 30, 2020
Published online: July 6, 2020
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background
Gut microbiota is an emerging field of research, and related research has shown breakthrough development in the past 15 years. Bibliometric analysis can be applied to analyze the evolutionary trends and emerging hotspots in this field.
Research motivation
As the potential clinical application of gut microbiota is understood more and more deeply, the number of studies on gut microbiota has increased rapidly. The study of gut microbiota is an emerging research field, and our findings will offer guidance to scholars in this field.
Research objectives
To study the subject trends and knowledge structures of gut microbiota related research fields from 2004 to 2018.
Research methods
Through the biclustering analysis, strategic diagram, and social network analysis diagram, main trends and knowledge structure of research fields concerning gut microbiota were analyzed to obtain and compare the research hotspots in each period.
Research results
According to the strategic coordinates and social relationship network map, Clostridium Infections/microbiology, Clostridium Infections/therapy, RNA, Ribosomal, 16S/genetics, Microbiota/genetics, Microbiota/immunology, Dysbiosis/immunology, Inflammation/immunology, Fecal Microbiota Transplantation/methods, and Fecal Microbiota Transplantation were emerging research hotspot in the past 5 years (2014-2018).
Research conclusions
Using strategic coordinates, our results identified which subjects have not been not fully studied yet, and the emerging hotspots in the social network map provide a direction for future research.
Research perspectives
This study is the first comprehensive bibliometric analysis of gut microbiota. Research on microbiota is still at the developing stage, and it will continue to be studied more deeply in the future. In our view, the abovementioned emerging hotspot problems can offer the basis for future research and can guide scientific researchers, clinicians, and medical educators to initiate new projects.
