Exploring the Emerging Trends of Spatial Epidemiology: A Scientometric Analysis Based on CiteSpace

Abstract

Infectious diseases are common challenges faced by people around the world, which jeopardize public health, as well as human well-being in various aspects of social and economic development. Although much progress has been made in spatial epidemiology, there is still very little scientific understanding of knowledge domain mapping with scientometric analysis. Based on a total of 4,552 literature records collected from the Web of Science Core Collection™, quantitative changes, research frontiers, research hotspots, and collaboration networks were analyzed by CiteSpace. The results show that both total publications and sum of times cited per year exhibit a rapid development trend in recent decades. The USA, England, and France are highly active in the field. The network of documents co-citation analysis is validated with almost same importance of documents, and primary research frontiers are landscape genetics, modeling and spatial analysis, and tropical diseases. The clustering of the keywords co-occurrence analysis network is heterogeneous and highly reliable, and research hotspots are related to phoma stem canker, vector preference, and aerosol chemical component. Scholars in the field of spatial epidemiology are closely connected, and they have been in a stable cooperative network, as well as institutions. Overall, scientometric analysis based on CiteSpace provides a sound tool to better understand the frontiers, hotspots, and emerging trends in the research domain of spatial epidemiology.