Research hotspots and trends of plumbagin: A bibliometric perspective

Plumbagin is a biologically active naphthoquinone compound. Research related to plumbagin has gained popularity, evidenced by a gradual increase in publications. However, a bibliometric study in this field has yet to be conducted. Consequently, this study aims to evaluate the global scientific output of plumbagin research through bibliometric analysis, explore the status of research in this field over the past 15 years, and predict its future research hotspots. Visual analysis software, including CiteSpace, VOSviewer, and the R package 'bibliometrix', was employed to analyze all literature pertaining to plumbagin published between 2009 and 2024. Bibliometric records were sourced from the Web of Science Core Collection. This study analyzed a total of 2061 publications. China was found to have the largest number of publications, while the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research recorded the highest publication count in this field. Thomas and David D were identified as the authors with the most publications. The journal with the highest number of citations was J Biol Chem, and Padhye S was noted as the author with the highest citation count. In recent years, cancer treatment has emerged as the most closely related research topic concerning plumbagin, and keyword cluster analysis highlighted 'sarcoplasmic reticulum' as a prominent research keyword. Through quantitative and visual analysis of plumbagin, this study reveals that plumbagin research remains a valuable field. Anticancer treatment of plumbagin is identified as a future research direction.