Breast cancer recurrence and tumor size: A bibliometric analysis

This research followed a descriptive bibliometric analysis design ^[4] to do a scientific mapping of scientific publications on tumor size and BC recurrence. This design was used in other research ^[5] and in many fields. ^[6] It was applied using VOSviewer, which is one of the most common software programs in the area of bibliometric analysis.

The Scopus database was used as a source of data. This database is mostly used to do bibliometric analyses due to the wide content of indexed journals and the adequate data supplied for this type of analysis.

The data were extracted from The Scopus database on October 14, 2023. The search was done as follows: TITLE-ABS-KEY ( breast AND cancer AND recurrence AND tumor AND size ) AND PUBYEAR > 2011 AND PUBYEAR < 2023 AND ( LIMIT-TO ( SUBJAREA , “MEDI” ) ) AND ( LIMIT-TO ( DOCTYPE , “ar” ) ) AND ( LIMIT-TO ( LANGUAGE , “English” ) ) AND ( LIMIT-TO ( EXACTKEYWORD , “Breast Cancer” ) ).

The search was restricted to publication years from 2012 to 2022, while excluding publications in 2023 and 2011. The search was limited to sub-area medicine. Additionally, only articles, English-language papers, and studies pertaining to “breast cancer” were included in the search parameters. The final dataset was downloaded and then analyzed.

A descriptive bibliometric analysis was performed from 2012 to 2022 to display the scientific mapping of BC recurrence and its relation to tumor size, the growing increase in the annual number of publications, the researchers authored in this field, many important journals that are interested in the topic, wide regions/countries, and co-authorship. All of them were analyzed by using the Scopus database and VOSviewer to ensure interest in that topic.

For the last 11 years from 2012 to 2022, the number of papers that were collected from the Scopus database talking about the relation between BC recurrence and tumor size was 1606 articles, as follows: in 2012 (n = 141), 2013 (n = 133), 2014 (n = 110), 2015 (n = 152), 2016 (n = 145), 2017 (n = 156), 2018 (n = 143), 2019 (n = 135), 2020 (n = 150), 2021 (n = 183), and 2022 (n = 158) (Figure 1, Table S1).

Figure 1:

The total number of countries that shared publications on BC recurrence and tumor size is 73 (Table S2). The United States had the most publications overall (452 articles, 28.1%), China (233 articles, 14.5%), the United Kingdom (125 articles, 7.8%), Italy (113 articles, 7%), Japan (109 articles, 6.8%), South Korea (100 articles, 6.2%), Germany (92 articles, 5.7%), France (73 articles, 4.5%), Canada (72 articles, 4.48%), and the Netherlands (54 articles, 3.36%) (Figure 2). Figure 3 shows the countries in co-authorship density map; the number of publications is correlated with the intensity of the yellow color.

Figure 2:

Figure 3:

Figure 4 shows a VOSviewer network visualization map of country co-authorship or what is known as international collaboration. There are 43 items (countries) involved in co-authorship in 8 clusters. Cluster 1 consists of 10 items (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, and Switzerland). Cluster 2 consists of 9 items (China, Greece, Italy, Japan, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, and Turkey). Cluster 3 consists of 7 items (Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Singapore, Taiwan, and the United Kingdom). Cluster 4 consists of 5 items (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Norway, and the United States). Cluster 5 consists of 5 items (Egypt, Finland, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Tunisia). Cluster 6 consists of 4 items (Canada, India, Iran, and Pakistan). Cluster 7 consists of 2 items (France and Portugal). Cluster 8 consists of 1 item (Israel). Items in each cluster shared the same color in the map, and the most co-authorship of each item happened in its cluster, but this does not prevent the presence of co-authorship with items in other clusters.

Figure 4:

This co-authorship is very interesting. As the collaboration in the research community goes beyond boundaries, it is healthy and good. I did a small search for the most-cited published article in the top 10 countries to demonstrate the educational institution of the first author and I was surprised. The highest-cited article is common in both the United States and Germany, while the educational institution of the first author in that article was the University of Oxford! Also, the highest-cited article is common in both France and the Netherlands, while the educational institution of the first author was The Netherlands Cancer Institute. The educational institution of the first author of the highest-cited article in Japan was Institut Curie, France. The educational institution of the first author of the highest-cited article in South Korea was NRG Oncology, the United States. The educational institution of the first author of the highest-cited article in Canada was Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the United States. (Table S3)

The total number of authors who shared publications related to BC recurrence and tumor size is 159 (Table S4). The author of the most publications was Morrow, M. (13 articles); followed by Rakha, E.A. (12 articles); Green, A.R. (11 articles); Colleoni, M., Rotmensz, N., Shah, C., Viale, G., and Wilkinson, J.B. (10 articles); and Han, W., and Hunt, K.K. (9 articles) (Figure 5).

Figure 5:

The total number of affiliations that shared publications on BC recurrence and tumor size is 160 (Table S5). The University of Texas, Anderson Cancer Center had the most published articles (48 articles), followed by Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (43 articles), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (33 articles), and the Institute Europeo di Oncologia (23 articles). Harvard Medical School and the University of Toronto had 22 articles. The Ministry of Education of the People Republic of China, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Universita degli Studi di Milano had 21 articles (Figure 6).

Figure 6:

The total number of journals that shared publications on BC recurrence and tumor size is 159 (Table S6). The most publications were found in 5 journals: Breast Cancer Research and Treatment (112 articles), Annals of Surgical Oncology (78 articles), Breast (53 articles), BMC Center (49 articles), and Clinical Breast Cancer (48 articles) (Figure 7).

Figure 7:

Table S7 gives brief details about the top 10 journals concerning the BC recurrence and tumor size topic, the total publications for each, the total number of citations, the cite score, the title of the most-cited article, the times it was cited, and the publisher. The top publisher here is Springer Nature (publisher of 4 of the top 10 journals); Elsevier is publisher of 3 journals and then Wiley-Blackwell, Impact Journals, and Frontiers Media S.A. Although Breast Cancer Research and Treatment journal had the highest cite score, the most-cited article was cited only 26 times, while for other journals like Breast, the most-cited article was cited 262 times; for Frontiers in Oncology, the most-cited article was cited 97 times, for Annals of Surgical Oncology journal, the most-cited article was cited 72 times, for International Journal of Radiation Oncology Biology Physics journal, the most-cited article was cited 64 times, and BMC Cancer journal, the most-cited article was cited 38 times.

Figure 8 shows the most-used keywords. Terms like breast cancer (occurrence 1606 times), tumor volume (occurrence 786 times), and cancer grading (occurrence 434 times) were the most used in the papers.

Figure 8:

The next table shows the most related keywords and the number of their occurrences. The most related keywords are breast cancer (1606 times), breast neoplasm (1160 times), cancer recurrence (873 times), tumor volume (786 times), breast tumor (690 times), neoplasm recurrence (639 times), cancer staging (604 times), prognosis (586 times), tumor recurrence (559 times), cancer size (501 times), and cancer grading (434 times).