The publication trend of neuropathic pain in the world and China: a 20–years bibliometric analysis

BACKGROUND: There has been tremendous change on neuropathic pain research in the past 20 years in China and around the world. We analyzed the global trend of neuropathic pain research and compared China’s quantity and quality of neuropathic pain-related publications with other developed countries. METHODS: Using terms “neuropathic pain”, we retrieved related publications from the Web of Science (WOS) database and PubMed database. From different aspects, such as the number of papers, total citations, average citations per item, H-index, research types, orientation, institutions, journals and funding, global neuropathic pain publications were classified and analyzed. RESULTS: From 1998 to 2017, 21,733 articles regarding neuropathic pain research were published worldwide. Of these, 9.394% were contributed by authors from Chinese institutions, which followed USA and ranked second. However, the quality indicators of publications, including total citations, average citations per item and H-index, were relatively low in China. High contribution journals and the 10 most-cited articles on neuropathic pain in world and China were also listed, which also can reflect the quality of neuropathic pain. Based on National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), basic research was the main articles type, accounting for 32.91% of China’s neuropathic pain research. CONCLUSION: Global neuropathic pain research increased rapidly during the 1998 to 2017 period. The USA was still the leader of neuropathic research. Although China had made great achievements, there was a significant gap in the high-quality studies between China and other leading countries.