The present study analyzes the worldwide research status and the development trend of the lung cancer based on papers published in SCI-indexed journals, with bibliometric analysis of the data from the SCI-E database of the WoS during 1979-2018 to assess the research situations of the lung cancer based on the number of articles, the year of publication, the countries, the institutes, the sources of journals, the discipline fields and the highly cited papers in ESI. There are 178694 published papers in total. It is indicated that the number of yearly published articles shows an overall upward trend all over the world. Among all countries, the top 10 countries are the USA, China, Japan, Italy, Germany, England, France, Canada, South Korea, and Netherlands. Harvard University of the USA has obvious advantages on the research of the lung cancer. Worldwide research activities in the field of the lung cancer show the characteristics of an interdisciplinary development. The rank of the journals, institutes and highly cited papers are overwhelmingly dominated by those from the USA. Shanghai Jiaotong University is the only institute in China in the top 10 publishing institutes. In recent years, the number of lung cancer articles from China published in SCI-indexed journals has been increased dramatically and has ranked the 2nd in the world, but the quality of articles is not as good as the quantity. The research of the lung cancer in China should be closely integrated with the clinical application.

lung cancer research  /  bibliometric  /  lung cancer research trend