Bibliometric and Visualized Analysis of Tissue Engineering for Cartilage Repair and Regeneration Over the Past Decade

Tremendous progress has been made in the field of cartilage repair and regeneration, particularly with tissue-engineering approaches. This study aims to estimate the global status and current trends in the field of cartilage tissue engineering.

Publications from 2011 to 2020 on tissue engineering for cartilage repair and regeneration were retrieved from Web of Science Core Collection database. The source data were statistically evaluated based on the bibliometrics. In terms of visualized analysis, some bibliometric indicators such as bibliographic coupling, co-citation, co-authorship and co-occurrence analysis were performed by VOSviewer software, to investigate the research trends in tissue engineering for cartilage repair and regeneration.

In total, 3715 papers were included. Since 2011, the amount of issued papers and relative research interest (RRI) have grown by leaps and bounds globally. The United States was the biggest contributor to the research in this field, due to the greatest citation frequency, the highest H index and the strongest total link strength. Romania had the highest average citation for each. The journal Tissue Engineering Part A published most articles in this field. For institutions, the largest contributors were Shanghai Jiaotong University, University of California System and Sichuan University. Studies could all be grouped into four main clusters: study of biomaterial scaffolds, study of seeding cells and growth factors, experimental animal model and clinical study, and mechanism research.

Great efforts should be put into the study of biomaterial scaffolds, seeding cells and growth factors, considered to be the next hot topics in cartilage tissue engineering. This findings provide collaborative insights and research orientation for academic researchers, surgeons and healthcare practitioners to a certain extent.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43465-021-00569-1.