Trends of publications on primary sarcomas of bone: A bibliometric analysis

Sarcomas are a large group of malignant mesenchymal tumors. Despite being rare diseases, the disease burden of these malignant tumors on the existing healthcare infrastructure is substantial. Although previous bibliometric studies have analyzed the trends of publications on osteosarcoma and Ewing's sarcoma, no such major analyses encompassing all primary bone sarcomas have been reported hitherto.

A cross-sectional, bibliometric study of the published literature on bone sarcoma was performed on the Web of Science (WoS) database (Clarivate analytics) on the March 25, 2024. Only the manuscripts with a focus on primary sarcoma of bone published between 1945 and 2024 and articles in the English language were included. Diverse details regarding the publication trends (such as top authors, journals, countries, etc.) and citation profiles (mean annual citations, H-index, etc.) of the included studies were tabulated. Based on the bibliographic data, keyword, and co-authorship mappings were performed using the VOSviewer.

A total of 3541 articles were included in the bibliometric analysis. The top three most-published authors were Hornicek FJ (n = 58), Henery Mankin (n = 53), and Unni K Krishnan (n = 43). The top three institutions publishing research on primary bone sarcoma were Mayo Clinic Hospital, USA (n = 162), Harvard University, USA (n = 146), and Massachusetts General Hospital, USA(n = 116) . The top three countries contributing to research on primary bone sarcoma were the USA (n = 1129), China (n = 402), and Japan (n = 385). CORR (n = 578), Skeletal Radiology (n = 430), and JBJS-Am (n = 228) were the most common journals publishing research on this subject. Overall, there has been a progressive upsurge in global publication rates, especially since 2009 (with a mean publication rate of 100-120). The rate of citations of publications on bone sarcomas has also followed a similar pattern of consistent growth during the past years, with a mean annual citation rate ranging between 4000 and 5000.

Based on our bibliometric study, there has been substantial growth in the published research on bone sarcomas over the past 2 decades. Concomitantly, the impact of these publications has also significantly increased across the globe over the past years. A majority of the contributions have originated from the USA, China, and Japan; with a high number of institutions and authors from these nations dominating in terms of the overall quantity of publications and citations on this subject. Our observations highlight the critical need for improved academic communications as well as a robust, international cooperative strategy to meliorate the research outputs on bone sarcoma.