Global and Chinese publications in plastic surgery journals between 2010 and 2020: a bibliometric analysis

Plastic surgery has evolved rapidly in recent years. We performed a bibliometric analysis of plastic surgery publications from 2010 to 2020 to evaluate global developments in plastic surgery and the Chinese contribution to this field.

The 2020 Journal Citation Reports (JCR) was used to identify all plastic surgery journals; those that were available on the Web of Science database were retrieved and analyzed according to their number of published articles, citation rates, impact factors (IFs), research funding, and article references. We also determined the most popular journals for research from the 8 top-ranking countries in terms of contributed articles, including China.

From 2010 to 2020, 55,554 articles were published in the 35 selected plastic surgery journals. China, which contributed 9.48% of these articles, was the country with the second-highest number of articles published, a number which has been increasing annually. The average IF of Chinese articles was 1.74, with an average citation count of 6.68. These figures were significantly lower than those for articles from developed countries. China contributed 1,641 articles to the 10 highest impact plastic surgery journals. The Journal of Craniofacial Surgery was the most popular in terms of contributions by China. China had the highest rate of articles supported by funding (45.30%). The top 12 research-topic clusters were obtained by analyzing the references in the articles. Emerging research-topic trends worldwide and in China included fat grafting and blindness after filler injection.

From 2010 to 2020, research into plastic surgery increased continuously, both worldwide and in China. However, the quality of the Chinese articles was lower than that of other top-ranked countries. Researchers who have elected to conduct research might consider emerging trends when designing future studies.