A bibliometric analysis of research on occupational asthma during 1998 to 2017

Abstract

Objective: To understand the research status of occupational asthma and provide information for related research on occupational asthma in the future. Methods: Papers on occupational asthma published from January 1998 to December 2017 had been retrieved in Web of Science core collection database on 9 October 2018. The data retrieval strategies were set as follows: #1 TS=(occupational AND asthma), #2 TS=(occupational AND asthmas), #3 TS=(occupational asthma OR occupational asthmas), #1 OR #2 OR #3. Three thousand two hundred and twelve publications were analyzed by bibliometric and visualizer. Results: Yearly output of articles in this field had been at a stable high level and annual total citations had been increasing. A significant positive correlation was found between the year and annual total citations (r=0.97, P<0.05). The most productive countries were European countries except the United States and Canada. Our country had few literatures accounting for 1.21 percent of the total and the research on occupational asthma in our country started relatively late which were published mainly from 2013 to 2017. The most studied category and journal were public environmental occupational health and Am J Ind Med respectively. "occupational exposure", "allergy" and "rhinitis" were key words with high frequency. Conclusion: Yearly output of publications of occupational asthma has been at a stable high level. Our country should do more research to provide a scientific basis for further prevention and management of occupational asthma.