Publication trends and hot topics in dysplastic nevus research: A 30-year bibliometric analysis

Abstract

Introduction: Dysplastic nevi are pigmented lesions that share clinical and histological features of both common nevi and melanoma. In recent years, there has been an increase in publications on dysplastic nevi. Bibliometric analysis is a method of evaluating trends in large number of publications and identifying popular topics. Objectives: The objective of this study is to provide an overview of the landscape of publications related to dysplastic nevi, visualize trends and popular topics in the literature. Methods: Scopus database was searched for the following terms in title, abstract or keywords: “dysplastic nevus” OR “dysplastic nevi”. Time span was set to 2002-2022. Document type was set to Article and Review. Data was obtained in RIS format from Scopus. Titles, authors, abstracts, institutions, countries, journals, references, and the citation information were recorded. Results: A network of 53422 references cited by 1559 publications was established. 1303 were articles and 256 were reviews. The number of publications increased 1.5 times from 2002 to 2022. Most studies were published from the USA 641 (41.2%) with Italy 171 (10,9%) and Australia 119 (7,6%) following. Keyword burst analysis was performed and melanoma related keywords seem to be more dominant in the recent decade. Author and reference co-citation analysis of were also performed. Conclusions: The amount of publications and citations generated about dysplastic nevi are increasing rapidly. This study demonstrates that there has been a shift in dysplastic nevi research in the last decade by focusing more on diagnostic methods and dysplastic nevi-melanoma relationship.