Global Research Trends of Neurosurgery: A Comprehensive Bibliometric and Visualized Analysis of Systematic Reviews

This study aimed to determine the bibliometric characteristics of scientific articles on systematic reviews of neurosurgery worldwide.

Bibliographic searches were performed in journals indexed by the Web of Science database until 2022, with no language restrictions. A total of 771 articles were ultimately included on the basis of predefined inclusion criteria, which were manually reviewed. The bibliometric analysis involved the use of quantitative bibliometric indicators and network analysis, which were performed using the bibliometrix package in R and VOSviewer, respectively.

The first publication was in 2002, and the number of publications increased over time, with the largest number of publications in 2021 (156 articles). The average number of citations per document was 17.36, and the annual growth rate was 6.82%. Nathan A. Shlobin was the author with the most published articles (19 articles). The most cited study was published by Jobst BC (2015). WORLD NEUROSURGERY was the journal with the most publications (51 articles). The country of corresponding authors with the most publications and the greatest number of total citations was the United States. The affiliations with the most articles were University of Toronto (67 articles) and Harvard Medical School (54 articles).

The increasing trend during the past 20 years, and especially in the past 2 years, highlights the advancements in various subspecialities in the field. Our analysis revealed that North American and Western European countries are at the forefront of the field. There is a poor output of publications, authors, and affiliations in Latin-American and African countries.