Research Progress on CRISPR/Cas9: A Bibliometric Analysis Based on a SCI-Expanded Database.

As one of the most cost-effective genome editing technologies, CRISPR/Cas9 has attracted considerable attention from worldwide scientists and international organizations. Therefore, it is fundamentally important for them to understand the research progress on the topic. Using the bibliometric method, this article characterizes the CRISPR/Cas9-related literature based on the network database platform of SCI-Expanded from Web of Science. We found: (1) Annual publications about CRISPR/Cas9 exhibited a sharp increase, with only one in 2011 and 1,055 in 2016. (2) The number of journals with an impact factor (IF) from 1 to 5 were major collections (n = 257, or 60.5%); the number of articles were mainly published in journals whose IF ranged from 3 to 8 (n = 1,128, or 51.9%). Number of articles per journal, citations per journal, and citations per article were ascending as the rising impact factor except for IF from 10 to 20. (3) Scientific Reports (IF = 5.228) published the highest number of articles with 216 records (10.1%), and Science (IF = 34.661) had the highest number of citations with 9,021 records. (4) The United States, China, and Japan not only had the greatest number of articles and citations but also produced the highest single-country articles, with the maximum proportion in Japan. International collaboration analysis further confirmed that the United States plays the leading role in this area. (5) Harvard University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences appeared at the top position of the publication output ranking. And cooperation among institutions often occurred within the same country and even in the same unit. (6) The teams of F. Zhang and J. A. Doudna were the strongest in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]