[Global research hotspots on oncology-bibliometric analysis based on the ESI hot papers]

With the increasing global burden of various cancer, an abundance of papers emerged every year in the research hotspots of oncology, covering a wide range of research types and topics. In order to facilitate interested readers to quickly grasp the frontier and hotspots of cancer research, it would be helpful to sort out and summarize the research topic in a timely manner. According to the classification of disciplines, we screened the Essential Science Indicators (ESI) hot papers released in 2019 for the ones in the oncology field, utilized methods such as bibliometrics, statistical description, hierarchical induction, analysis and interpretation to further reveal the context and characteristics of research in the field of oncology, summarized the latest progresses and future directions in the field, and provided information and hints for the trajectory of future research. A total of 549 papers were included, which were mainly from the field of clinical medicine; the country with the most publications was the United States, while China ranked the fourth in terms of contribution; the research institution with the highest number of published papers was University of Texas system; N Engl J Med published the most papers, with contribution also from highly influential journals in the field of oncology such as Lancet Oncol, J Clin Oncol, JAMA Oncol and Cancer Discov. Oncology remained the most popular research topic in the medical research and spanned a wide spectrum of sub-topics. In this study, we demonstrated and sorted out research frontiers in the field of oncology in 12 different research directions including the basic cancer research, cancer epidemiology, and various tumors types related to different systems and organs.