Bibliometric analysis connecting discrete studies in nasopharyngeal carcinoma and predict future research trends

As an Epstein-Barr virus-associated malignant tumor, nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) has a prevalence 50–100 times greater in southern China, southeast Asia and north Africa than that in other parts of the world (1-4). Despite the disease burden in these NPC endemic areas, the aetiology of NPC is still elusive and there is no effective prevention measure to NPC (5). In the article of the Translational Cancer Research, Xing et al. (6) presented a research article titled “The 100 most cited papers in nasopharyngeal carcinoma between 2000 and 2019: a bibliometric study” (6). The authors screened over 14,000 papers studying NPC during the period of 2000 to 2019, and investigated the most highly-cited 100 publications in NPC study using a bibliometric analysis approach. The citation patterns of these 100 high-citation papers, their journals, countries publishing these top 100 highly cited papers and research domains are analysed to shed light on the progress tendency of NPC studies and to provide direction of future studies.

The authors noticed that there has been a rapid growth on NPC publications in the past 20 years, from 256 articles in 2,000 to 1,311 articles in 2019. It is not a surprise that China contributes to most of the 100 high-citation publications on NPC, as southern China is one of the endemic centres, and there is an urgent need to carry out research and find out ways to ease the disease burden. The authors also provided the top three hottest research domains for the top 100 highly cited papers based on their analysis.

Bibliometrics analysis can also perform some deeper analysis for the publications on NPC. Here we take author keyword analysis and institutional collaboration analysis as examples. To do this, the same literature search methodology adopted in (6) was performed on 19 April 2023, a total of 14,182 papers were found during the publication period of 2000–2019.

Figure 1 shows the author keywords mapping for NPC publications during 2000–2019. The VOSviewer bibliometrics analysis software was used for the mapping (7).

Figure 1 Mapping of author keywords for Web of Science publications on NPC during 2000–2019. 14,182 publications on NPC during 2000–2019; 17,007 Author Keywords in total, 151 Author Keywords with occurrences ≥30 are captured in the mapping. NPC, nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

High frequency author keywords like “nasopharyngeal carcinoma”; “radiotherapy”; “Epstein-Barr virus”; “apoptosis”; “cancer”; “metastasis”; “intensity-modulated radiotherapy” can be clearly spotted in the mapping. Among these author keyword, “Epstein-Barr virus”; “apoptosis”; “metastasis” are keywords related to the possible cause of NPC. It is suggested that Epstein-Barr virus infection leads to apoptosis-resistance (8-16), thus causing chronic inflammation and gene mutation in the pharyngeal mucosal epithelial cells (8-17).

Apoptosis is an essential component of the human immune system to maintain homeostasis and health (18,19). With programmed cell death (PCD) like apoptosis, pyroptosis (20) and necroptosis (21), our immune system performs the “self-destroy and rebuild” strategy targeting the damaged body cells (22) to actively destroy the damaged body cells, and restoring homeostasis. The apoptotic cells need to be effectively cleared away, a process termed as efferocytosis (23). Any defect in the efferocytosis will lead to chronic inflammatory disorder, causing diseases like NPC.

Figure 2 provides the mapping of top 20 contributing institutions and countries on NPC research and their collaborations. Sun Yat-Sen Univ., Cent S Univ., Univ., Hong Kong, Chinese Univ., Hong Kong and Chang Gung Univ., are the top 5 institutions contributing to NPC publications during 2000–2019. China, the United States and Taiwan are the three contributing countries/regions on NPC study. Both the institution co-authorship mapping and country co-authorship mapping are displayed using the “overlay visualization” function in VOSviewer. The difference in color shows that NPC researches in China are carried out in a more recent average time frame compared to other countries/regions.

Figure 2 Mapping of top institutions, countries/regions and their collaborations on NPC research during 2000–2019. (A) 14,181 publications on NPC during 2000–2019; 7,617 institutions in total; 20 institutions with publication number ≥150 are captured in the mapping; (B) 14,181 publications on NPC during 2000–2019; 118 countries/regions in total; 22 countries/regions with publication number ≥100 are captured in the mapping. NPC, nasopharyngeal carcinoma.

In conclusion, bibliometrics analysis is a powerful research publication analysis method. It can provide an overview of the research in certain subject area or topic like NPC, their impact and collaboration. It is a powerful tool to integrate the discrete studies on NPC in the past years and find new understandings, and show the trend of research that is useful for future research.

Acknowledgments

Funding: None.

Footnote

Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Translational Cancer Research. The article did not undergo external peer review.

Conflicts of Interest: The author has completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://tcr.amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/tcr-23-897/coif). The author has no conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical Statement: The author is accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.

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