Global productivity and research trends of colorectal carcinoma: A scientometric analysis of studies published between 1980 and 2021

Abstract

Although colorectal cancer (CRC) is a serious cause of death and has a significant impact on patients’ quality of life and incidence rate of CRC has increased among the younger populations, bibliometric research of CRC has not been conducted yet. To perform a comprehensive analysis of scientific publications on CRC using various statistical and bibliometric techniques. Publications on CRC published between 1980 and 2021 were downloaded from the Web of Science database and analyzed using statistical methods. The trending topics, collaborations among countries, and citation relationships were analyzed using bibliometric network visualization mapping. The number of articles to be probably published in the next 5 years was estimated using the exponential smoothing estimator. The Spearman’s correlation rank correlation coefficient was used to analyze the correlations among the variables. A total of 122,717 publications were found in the fields of oncology, gastroenterology, hepatology, and surgery. Of the published articles, 64,774 publications were research articles. The top five countries that contributed the most to the literature were the USA (16,604; 25.6%), China (10,567; 16.3%), Japan (7932; 12.2%), the UK (5009; 7.1%), and Italy (4287; 6.6%). The most prolific author, institution, and journal in the field of CRC were Zhang Y (n = 331), University of Texas System (n = 1646), and Diseases of the Colon and Rectum (n = 2090), respectively. The most influential journal based on the average number of citations received per article was CA-A Cancer Journal for Clinicians (citations per article; 286). There was a significant positive correlation between the number of articles produced by the countries on CRC and gross domestic product and human development index (r = 0.726, P < .001; r = 0.658, P < .001, respectively). Additionally, a significant moderate correlation of CRC was found with gross domestic product per capita (r = 0.711, P < .001). Keywords like overall survival, neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy, locally advanced rectal cancer, robotic surgery, anastomotic leakage, chemoradiotherapy, metastatic colorectal cancer, KRAS, meta-analysis, colorectal surgery, and laparoscopic surgery were studied.