A commentary on ‘Global research status and frontiers on autophagy in hepatocellular carcinoma: a comprehensive bibliometric and visualized analysis’

Sep 21, 2026

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A scholarly letter provides a methodological and results-focused commentary on a bibliometric and visualized analysis of autophagy research in hepatocellular carcinoma. The authors assess search strategy rigor, including synonym combinations for HCC and the use of PubMed MeSH terms, and they evaluate keyword integration and clustering visualization. They also suggest strengthening international cooperation, interpreting journal impact-factor diversity, addressing the low proportion of review articles among highly cited papers, and improving citation metrics via AAC, median citations, and combined reporting with tables and discussion.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryHealthcare

FormatPDF

Pages2

Reading Time5 min

AccessFree to download

Correspondence

Commentary on methods and keyword analysis

Suggestions for international collaboration and journal impact diversity

Discussion on citation patterns and citation metrics

Conclusion and ethical note

’Correspondence A commentary on ‘Global research status and frontiers on autophagy in hepatocellular carcinoma: a comprehensive bibliometric and visualized analysis’ Sike He, MD, Hao Zeng, MD* Dear Editor, Recently, we read the article published in the International Journal of Surgery by He and colleagues[1] with great interest. This present bibliometric analysis systematically and comprehensively presents the current research status, future hotspots, and frontiers of autophagy in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by analyzing the trends in publication, distribution of countries and institutions, co-cited networks (author, journal, and reference), and keywords. Since growing evidence conﬁrmed that autophagy plays a role in cancer biology, this bibliometric analysis is much needed and is useful to provide an overview of this special topic[2] . We sincerely congratulate the authors for their outstanding contribution to this research ﬁeld. After carefully reading, here we would like to express some of our views that may help enhance this area for further research. First, the meticulous arrangements of search strategies play a key role in bibliometric analysis. He et al. made the search strategy rigorous by using the combination of synonyms of HCC to further reduce the omission of relevant literature and maximally avoid bias, which is a useful example for bibliometric analysis. The medical subject heading (MeSH) terms provided in PubMed can allow searches to cover a broader range of literature since MeSH contains a hierarchical structure and MeSH descriptors represent different semantic types, which should be recommended in bibliometrics[3] . Second, the keyword analysis is signiﬁcantly meaningful since the authors completed the integration of keywords to illustrate the core concepts of the studies. Simple keywords displayed by articles are sometimes overgeneralized, failing to provide sufﬁcient information. The keywords clusters visualization is worthy of highly appreciated and Department of Urology, Institute of Urology, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, People ’s Republic of China Sponsorships or competing interests that maybe relevant to content are disclosed atthe end of this article. *Corresponding author. Address: Department of Urology, Institute of Urology, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, People’s 610041 Republic of China. [E-mail: kucaizeng@163.com](E-mail: kucaizeng@163.com) (H. Zeng). Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work, even for commercial purposes, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms. International Journal of Surgery (2024) 110:4455–4456 Received 28 February 2024; Accepted 3 March 2024 Published online 27 March 2024 [http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/JS9.0000000000001343](http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/JS9.0000000000001343) the text about these topics is pertinent and can elucidate some deep and insightful understanding in this ﬁeld. Some suggestions could be considered by the authors. First, the authors have already mentioned that apart from China and the United States, cooperation among other countries is limited. We think that authors could call for increased inter-country cooperation to break down academic barriers to promoting the development of this research ﬁeld. Then, the span of journal impact factor levels is very large, from Frontiers in Oncology and Cancers to Nature and Cell, which indicates that the depth of relevant research spans a wide range, and the articles published in Nature or Cell could indicated that autophagy is critically important in HCC with great fundamental and translational value, and can promote the disciplinary integration, involving scientists from a wider range of ﬁelds than j

FAQs

What aspects of the bibliometric study does the correspondence praise most?

It highlights the meticulous search strategy using HCC-related synonyms and recommends PubMed MeSH terms for broader coverage. It also notes the meaningful keyword integration and the value of keyword cluster visualizations.

What suggestions are proposed to improve the research discussion?

The letter suggests calling for stronger inter-country cooperation beyond China and the United States, adding commentary on why only one review article appears in the top 10 cited manuscripts, and discussing how top cited original articles contributed to the field.

How does the letter propose refining citation analysis?

It recommends using average annual citations (AACs) alongside total citations (TCs), adding tables ranked by AACs, and considering median citation values (MVCs) to reduce distortion caused by highly cited outliers. It suggests combining AAC, TC, and MVC for a more precise representation of citation rates.

Sep 21, 2026

Upload by Liam