Global research trends and hotspots on smoking and lung cancer from 1994-2023: A bibliometric analysis

Lung cancer is a significant cause of mortality, especially among smokers. Lung cancer and smoking are strongly associated, according to numerous studies.

Publications related to smoking and lung cancer were retrieved from the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) database of the Web of Science Core Collection for the period 1994-2023. Descriptive and visual analyses were performed on the topics, journals, countries, institutions, authors, and citations of the publications.

A total of 728 articles were retrieved from the Web of Science (WOS) SCIE database for the period January 1994 to December 2023, and the number of publications in the relevant literature demonstrated a progressive increase with time. A total of 647 articles were classified as experimental, while 81 were classified as reviews. The studies were published in 200 journals. The three journals that published the most articles were the American Journal of Epidemiology with 82 articles, Lung Cancer with 34 articles, and Cancer Causes and Control with 26 articles. The three most prolific countries were the United States (286 articles, 38.3%; 15879 citations), China (116 articles, 15.9%; 2911 citations), and France (75 articles, 10.3%; 3694 citations). The four most popular keywords in this field are 'early cancer detection', 'experimental', 'CT', and 'survival rate'.

The findings of our study revealed key areas for focus in smoking and lung cancer research, having a view of supplying important data and motivation for further investigations.