Holistic analysis of hepatosteatosis literature: a scientometric study of global hepatosteatosis publications between 1980 and 2019

Aim: Hepatosteatosis is a subtype of Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) with an increased significance and prevalence in recent years, progressing to chronic liver disease and even hepatocellular carcinoma. It has become the new focus of hepatology instead of viral hepatitis in the last 5 years because of its increasing prevalence and close association with metabolic diseases such as obesity, diabetes and hyperlipidemia. The present study aimed to make a holistic scientometric analysis of scientific studies conducted on hepatosteatosis. 
Material and Method: We analyzed scientometric analysis of “hepatosteatosis” publications that were indexed in Web of Science databases between 1980 and 2019 and found a total of 996 articles. 
Results: The most published documents were original articles (80.924%). The most investigated areas in the hepatosteatosis literature were found to be gastroenterology, biochemistry and endocrinology (n=751, 687 and 575 documents, respectively). The USA was the leading country with 371 articles, followed by Turkey, China, Japan, Italy and Germany (n=146, 145, 81 and 58 articles, respectively). Zhang Yen was found to be the most productive author from Yanbian University (China) and California University was the most productive institution. The hepatosteatosis literature H-index was measured as 76, with an average of 24.8 citations per item and a total of 24.705 citations. The most indexed keywords were found to be “hepatosteatosis”, “fatty liver”, “obesity” and “insulin resistance”. The USA, China, UK, Germany and Italy were found to be the most cooperating countries. 
Conclusion: Hepatosteatosis is an issue with increased importance and popularity with the intense interest of researchers in the past few years. The data of the present study, in which the scientometric analysis of the studies on hepatosteatosis was performed, emphasized the importance of the subject once again and will guide researchers for new researches to be conducted on many subjects such as which countries, institutions, individuals and journals are more interested in hepatosteatosis, and in which areas the studies are concentrated. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first scientometric study evaluating hepatosteatosis.