Surging numbers of researches in nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) quantum chemical calculation in structure elucidation of natural products have appeared in recent years, making it a hot spot. But so far, the effective summarization of the numerous and jumbled body of research is still lacking. In this case, this study seeks to show the research structure of this discipline from a integral and scientific viewpoint utilizing bibliometric analysis approach, which is an effective tool to analyze literature resources based on statistical and mathematical methodologies. Literature related to the NMR quantum chemical calculation in structure elucidation was obtained from Web of Science Core Collection (WOSCC) database. The annual publication, collaboration, hot spots, discipline structure and future development trend were analyzed by bibliometric software (Bibliometrix and VOSviewer). 1620 initial research articles published from 2013 to 2023 in this field were included in the analysis. 2015 is a breaking point. China and India are the countries with most contributions, and Russia Academy of Science is the affiliation with the most output. Journal of Molecular Structure (total publication = 348) is the journal with the most output while Journal of the American Chemical Society (local citation = 4090) is the one with the most citations. Muthu, Sambantham is the author who have most articles and citations. The research could be roughly divided into the calculation parameters, the source and properties of the research targets and theory or method of NMR quantum chemical calculation in structure elucidation based on the keywords analysis. There are numerous illustrations to support that quantum chemical calculation of NMR parameters can be used in structure elucidation, which builds firm cornerstone for this field. Three branches, including research target, basis support and application, have made some achievements, but still have wild development space. In recent years, the keywords “hardness”, “docking”, “surface”, “MEP”, “LUMO” appeared most frequently, demonstrating that more concepts in quantum chemistry as well as methods based on them were introduced in structure elucidation and became hot spots in recent years. These results provided an objective and data-based introduction to the NMR quantum chemical calculation in structure elucidation. It can be observed that growing numbers of quantum chemical theories as well as related methods were introduced in NMR parameters calculation in structure elucidation, making the process more efficient and the results more accurate. However, great efforts still needed to pay to archive more precise structures elucidation and high-throughput error correction.
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