Bibliometric analysis is a well-established approach to quantitatively assess scholarly productivity. However, there have been few assessments of research productivity on systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) to date. The aim of this study was to analyze global research productivity through original articles published in journals indexed by the Web of Science from 1971 to 2020. Bibliometric data was obtained from the Science Citation Index Expanded in the Web of Science Core Collection database. Only original articles published between 1971 and 2020 on SLE were included in the analysis. Over the 50-year period, publication production in SLE research has steadily increased with a mean annual growth rate of 8.0%. A total of 44,967 articles published in 3435 different journals were identified. The journal Lupus published the largest number of articles (n = 3371; 8.0%). A total of 148 countries and regions contributed to the articles. The global productivity ranking was led by the United States (n = 11,244, 25.0%), followed by China (n = 4893, 10.9%). A three-field plot showed that the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation and the Johns Hopkins University together contributed 18.5% of all articles from the United States. A co-occurrence network analysis revealed five highly connected clusters of SLE research. In conclusion, this bibliometric analysis provided a comprehensive overview of the status of SLE research, which could enable a better understanding of the development in this field in the past 50 years.
Keywords: bibliometric analysis; bibliometrix; network analysis; research hotspots; research trends; systemic lupus erythematosus.