Study of international anticancer research trends via co-word and document co-citation visualization analysis

The aim of this work is to make a bibliometric analysis of anticancer research literature based on the data from the Web of Science. Anticancer drug research references published from 2000 to 2014 were used. Citespace software was employed to generate the knowledge maps of country/institution, cited authors, cited journals, co-words and cited references related with anticancer drug research. Results of this analysis indicated that the USA is the most productive country and the Chinese Acad. Sci. is the most productive institution in this field. Maeda H is the most influential author, leading the highest citation author group. “CANCER RES” is the most cited journal in which the most influential anticancer drug research articles were published. Mosmann’s (1983) paper is a representative and symbolic reference with the highest co-citation of number of 146 (centrality 0.29). The five hot anticancer drug research topics were also disclosed; they are: (1) chemotherapy drugs, (2) drug delivery, (3) bioscreening, (4) drug resistance research, and (5) enzyme inhibitor studies. Research frontiers identified included drug delivery with nanoparticles, controlled release, metabolism and so on. These analyses will be valuable for the reader to grasp an overall picture of anticancer research and research trends during these years.