Research trends and hotspots on human papillomavirus: a bibliometric analysis of 100 most-cited articles

BACKGROUND: The study aimed to investigate the research trends and hotspots in the field of human papillomavirus (HPV) from the top-cited articles. METHODS: The database Web of Science (WOS) was utilized to retrieve articles closely related to HPV, and 100 articles with the most citations were selected. Bibliometric analysis along with visualization tools was applied to analyze citation, publication time, journal, author, geographic distribution, institutional and international cooperation, title, abstract, and keyword co-occurrence cluster. RESULTS: The articles were mainly published from 2003 to 2012 (56%) and most articles were published in 2007 (13 papers). The citations ranged from 506 to 6,426, with a median citation of 798.5. The United States contributed 68% of the papers, and most articles were published in North America and Europe continent. Boash FX, Meijer CLJM, and Munoz N owned most authorship (13 papers). The most highlighted research category was oncology (34%), and the most aggregated topics were epidemiology (34%) and etiology (32%). The emerging trends on subtopics including vaccination, intention, screening, and man, were raising. CONCLUSIONS: Emerging trends in epidemiology, etiology, and HPV-related cancers remained central to the field. For decades, the focus of HPV research has shifted from identification to screening and prevention. With the implementation of vaccination, future studies may focus on its practice as well as public intention.