Global scientific production of robotic liver resection from 2003 to 2022: A bibliometric analysis

Objective

With the widespread application of robotic liver surgery, the body of literature related to robotic liver resection is growing. However, there is a lack of understanding of the publication activities surrounding robotic liver resection research. This bibliometric study aimed to detect the global publication distributions of robotic liver resection research over the past 20 years.

Methods

Articles on robotic liver resection published from January 1, 2003 to August 31, 2022 were extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection database. The publication language was restricted to English. Literature distribution analyses were performed at the country/region, institution, author, and journal levels. In addition, each author's productivity was assessed with Lotka's law. Academic influence was assessed by local citation score and global citation score. The keywords evolution was also analyzed. R software and HistCite were applied for the analyses.

Results

A total of 685 articles were identified, with 4107 local citations and 9458 global citations. These articles were published in 156 journals and written by 2449 authors from 785 institutions in 49 countries/regions. The cumulative publication number of the last 5 years accounted for 66.3% (454/685) of the total publication number. The USA played a leading role in the publication output (212, 30.9%), followed by Italy (120, 17.5%) and China (104, 15.2%). The three countries also had the most citations. Yonsei University from South Korea had the highest publication number (30, 4.4%). The Asian Journal of Surgery published the most articles (51, 7.4%), and Surgical Endoscopy and Other Interventional Techniques had the most local citations (575) and global citations (1115). Sucandy published 44 articles, ranking first in productivity. Choi had many more citations than other scholars, with 465 local citations and 1253 global citations. Lotka's law reflected that the majority of the authors (1783, 72.8%) wrote one document. The top 5 most prominent keywords were “surgery”, “hepatocellular-carcinoma”, “outcomes”, “hepatectomy”, and “experience”.

Conclusion

The number of publications on robotic liver resection research has been rapidly increasing over the last 20 years. The most prolific countries/regions and institutions also had strong academic influence. The articles, institutions and authors with high citations mainly came from USA, China, South Korea, Italy, and Singapore. The research hotspots shifted from survival to complications, mortality, and augmented reality.