Thematic analysis of multiple sclerosis research by enhanced strategic diagram

TL;DR

This bibliometric review analyzes a decade of multiple sclerosis research, highlighting emerging topics and demonstrating significant growth in the field, with expectations of further expansion in the coming years.

Contribution

It introduces an enhanced strategic diagram approach to identify emerging research areas in MS literature from 2012 to 2021.

Findings

18003 articles published between 2012-2021

Emerging keywords include COVID-19, microglia, and clinical trials

Research output is expected to more than double in the next decade

Abstract

This bibliometric review summarised the research trends and analysed research areas in multiple sclerosis (MS) over the last decade. The documents containing the term "multiple sclerosis" in the article title were retrieved from the Scopus database. We found a total of 18003 articles published in journals in the English language between 2012 and 2021. The emerging keywords identified utilising the enhanced strategic diagram were "covid-19", "teriflunomide", "clinical trial", "microglia", "b cells", "myelin", "brain", "white matter", "functional connectivity", "pain", "employment", "health-related quality of life", "meta-analysis" and "comorbidity". In conclusion, this study demonstrates the tremendous growth of MS literature worldwide, which is expected to grow more than double during the next decade especially in the identified emerging topics.