Global Research Landscape and Intellectual Structure of Boron Neutron Capture Therapy Research: A Review Based on Scientometric Tools

Abstract

Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) is a non-invasive therapeutic technique for treating invasive malignant tumors. A tremendous amount of research is published in this area every year, and it needs to be analyzed and evaluated to measure the growth and trends of the research. This study aimed to visualize the global research landscape on BNCT based on the WoS database. This study applies co-citation and cluster analyses as a common scientometric approach to analyze the growth of research and trends in the field. Data was collected from the Web of Science database as indexed from 1980- 2021; 3639 records were retrieved. PreMap, UCINET, and NetDraw software packages were used for data visualization. As the most productive countries, the USA and Japan were in the top ranks, respectively. As the most influential researcher, BARTH, ROLF F, With the degree centrality SAKURAI, YOSHINORI, and in-betweenness centrality, MIYATAKE, SHIN-ICHI ranked first. The co-citation network of papers in the field depicted three main clusters: treatment, physics, and measurement. Social network analyses and the quality of links among papers in neutron therapy can be helpful in different aspects. Co-citation analysis depicts the internal structure of the field and helps in understanding the nature of relations among the scientometric entities. The study concludes by indicating the limitations of the present study and suggesting future research direction in the field. The results of this study may help policy-makers, researchers, practitioners, and other key stakeholders in the field.

Keywords

• scientometrics
• citation analysis
• neutron therapy
• boron neutron capture therapy (bnct)
• research policy
• intellectual structure