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©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Current global research landscape on COVID-19 and cancer: Bibliometric and visualization analysis
Sa'ed H Zyoud, Amer Koni, Samah W Al-Jabi, Riad Amer, Muna Shakhshir, Rand Al Subu, Husam Salameh, Razan Odeh, Sultan Musleh, Faris Abushamma, Adham Abu Taha
Sa'ed H Zyoud, Amer Koni, Samah W Al-Jabi, Department of Clinical and Community Pharmacy, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah National University, Nablus 44839, Palestine
Sa'ed H Zyoud, Clinical Research Centre, An-Najah National University Hospital, Nablus 44839, Palestine
Amer Koni, Riad Amer, Husam Salameh, Razan Odeh, Sultan Musleh, Hematology and Oncology Department, An-Najah National University Hospital, Nablus 44839, Palestine
Riad Amer, Rand Al Subu, Husam Salameh, Sultan Musleh, Faris Abushamma, Department of Medicine, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah National University, Nablus 44839, Palestine
Muna Shakhshir, Department of Nutrition, An-Najah National University Hospital, Nablus 44839, Palestine
Faris Abushamma, Department of Urology, An-Najah National University Hospital, Nablus 44839, Palestine
Adham Abu Taha, Department of Pathology, An-Najah National University Hospital, Nablus 44839, Palestine
Adham Abu Taha, Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah National University, Nablus 44839, Palestine
Author contributions: Zyoud SH designed the study, collected the data, analyzed the data, made major contributions to the manuscript’s existing literature search and interpretation, and drafted the manuscript; Koni A, Al-Jabi S, Amer R, Shakhshir M, Al subu R, Salameh H, Odeh R, Musleh S, Abushamma F, and Abu Taha A were involved in interpretation of the data, and made revisions to the initial draft; all authors provided a critical review and approved the final manuscript before submission.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All authors report no relevant conflict of interest for this article.
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:
https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Corresponding author: Sa'ed H Zyoud, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Clinical and Community Pharmacy, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, An-Najah National University, Academic Street, Nablus 44839, Palestine. saedzyoud@yahoo.com
Received: April 30, 2022
Peer-review started: April 30, 2022
First decision: June 8, 2022
Revised: June 26, 2022
Accepted: October 11, 2022
Article in press: October 11, 2022
Published online: October 24, 2022
BACKGROUND
Cancer is a severe public health issue that seriously jeopardizes global health. In individuals with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), cancer is considered an independent risk factor for severe illness and increased mortality.
AIM
To identify research hotspots and prospects, we used bibliometrics to examine the global production of COVID-19 literature published in the field of oncology.
METHODS
Data on publication output were identified based on the Scopus database between January 1, 2020, and June 21, 2022. This study used VOSviewer to analyze collaboration networks among countries and assess the terms most often used in the titles and abstracts of retrieved publications to determine research hotspots linked to cancer and COVID-19. The Impact Index Per Article for the top 10 high-cited papers collected from Reference Citation Analysis (RCA) are presented.
RESULTS
A total of 7015 publications were retrieved from the database. The United States published the greatest number of articles (2025; 28.87%), followed by Italy (964; 13.74%), the United Kingdom (839; 11.96%), and China (538; 7.67%). The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (n = 205, 2.92%) ranked first, followed by the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (n = 176, 2.51%). The European Journal of Cancer (n = 106, 1.51%) ranked first, followed by the Frontiers in Oncology (n = 104, 1.48%), Cancers (n = 102, 1.45%), and Pediatric Blood and Cancer (n = 95; 1.35%). The hot topics were stratified into “cancer care management during the COVID-19 pandemic”; and “COVID-19 vaccines in cancer patients”.
CONCLUSION
This is the first bibliometric analysis to determine the present state and upcoming hot themes related to cancer and COVID-19 and vice versa using VOSviewer during the early stages of the pandemic. The emergence of hot themes related to cancer and COVID-19 may aid researchers in identifying new research areas in this field.
Core Tip: Many systematic reviews and meta-analyses found that the number of papers investigating the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on cancer in various countries increased during the pandemic. The existing literature on COVID-19, focusing on cancer research, has not been provided by any bibliometric analysis. The hot topics were stratified into “cancer care management during the COVID-19 pandemic”; and “COVID-19 vaccines in cancer patients”. Cancer and COVID-19 have emerged as hot topics, which may help researchers uncover new research opportunities in this area.
