A bibliometric analysis of global laparoscopy research trends during 1997–2011

In this study, we aim to evaluate the global scientific output of laparoscopy research, and try to find an alternative statistical approach to quantitatively and qualitatively assess the current global research trend on laparoscopy. Data were based on the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-E), from the Institute of Scientific Information Web of Science database. Articles referring to laparoscopy during 1997–2011 were concentrated on the analysis by scientific output characters, international collaboration, and the frequency of author keywords used. Globally, 59,264 papers were published during the 15-year study period, including 15 document types. Among them, there were 40,318 articles, to which a two-phase model was applied to simulate the high correlation between cumulative number of articles and the year. International collaborative publications were more prevalent in recent years, and were more powerful due to the sharing of ideas and workloads. Japan, Sweden, Poland, Canada, the UK, India, France and Spain benefit a lot from the international cooperation. With the comprehensive analysis of distribution and change of article titles, author keywords and abstracts, it can be concluded that research related to ‘morbid obesity’, ‘robotic surgery’, ‘prostatectomy’ and ‘NOTES (natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery)’ are the main orientations of all the laparoscopy research in the 21st century.