Exploring research hotspots: Citation burst detection in optic nerve sheath diameter

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Dear Editor, We read with interest the article published in the Indian Journal of Anaesthesia titled ‘Research trends in optic nerve sheath diameter monitoring – A bibliometric study’ by Magoon et al.[1] This bibliometric analysis investigated research trends in optic nerve sheath diameter (ONSD), revealing that the applications of ONSD have recently expanded beyond neuroscience, with a growing emphasis on refining ONSD measurement techniques. This paper is the first bibliometric study in the field of ONSD, providing valuable insights into potential future research directions. However, we would like to offer some suggestions regarding this bibliometric study. Firstly, the article utilised the PubMed database, primarily designed for researchers to access published literature rather than for bibliometric analyses. Therefore, combining the database with bibliometric methods is essential to ensure research accuracy.[2] After retrieving literature from PubMed, specific processing steps are necessary. For instance, the selection is typically limited to English to avoid duplicate publications in different languages. In addition, lower-quality documents, such as conference papers, autobiographies and abstracts, should be excluded to maintain the quality of the included literature. This study used the retrieved data directly without additional processing, which could compromise the accuracy and integrity of the dataset and subsequently reduce the reliability of the results. Secondly, the authors did not perform synonym merging, such as combining ‘optic nerve sheath diameter’ with ‘ONSD’ or ‘TBI’ with ‘traumatic brain injury’, which are synonymous terms. The lack of synonym merging can introduce inaccuracies in keyword co-occurrence and clustering analyses, as duplicate terms may result in inaccurate keyword frequencies and link strengths. Thirdly, this study conducted an author network analysis, but did not examine institutions, countries or co-cited literature. Analysing institutions and countries in this field can reveal collaborative networks, offering researchers potential options for future cooperation. Co-citation occurs when two documents are cited together in the bibliography of a third source, establishing a co-citation relationship. Co-cited references form the theoretical foundation of a research field, with the most frequently cited references representing hotspots and landmarks due to their significant contributions and influence.[3] Finally, the article employed keyword co-occurrence analysis to examine research hotspots. In addition to keyword co-occurrence analysis, citation burst detection is a widely used bibliometric method for identifying research hotspots.[4] Keyword co-occurrence analysis primarily reveals relationships among research themes, enabling researchers to identify emerging interdisciplinary topics and potential collaborations, while citation burst detection tracks the evolution of research trends over time, highlights research frontiers and hotspots and identifies landmark articles that significantly influence this field. Using Kleinberg’s burst detection algorithm in CiteSpace, we analysed the top 13 keywords with the highest burst strength, focusing on those that surged after 2018 to examine current research frontiers [Figure 1]. Hotspots keywords from the past 5 years include transcranial Doppler, multiple sclerosis, magnetic resonance imaging, intensive care, eyeball transverse diameter and ocular ultrasonography. Notably, eyeball transverse diameter and ocular ultrasonography remain central hotspots in this field, with burst periods extending through 2023. Keyword burst analysis is a powerful supplement to co-occurrence analysis, providing verification and additional insights.Figure 1: Top 13 keywords with the strongest citation bursts in optic nerve sheath diameterFinancial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest.