Bibliometric analysis of mycotoxin research based on Web of Science and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure

Mycotoxins are toxic secondary metabolites produced by filamentous fungi, such as Fusarium, Aspergillus, and Penicillium. People or animals can be exposed to this toxin through food or feed, resulting in acute or chronic poisoning and damage to the liver, kidney, nervous tissue, reproductive system, and skin and causing a serious decline in growth performance or even death. To understand the current research status and frontier trends of mycotoxins locally and abroad, the Web of Science (WOS) core collection database and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) database were searched. The visualization software CiteSpace 6.2.R4 was used to conduct bibliometric analysis of the annual distribution of publication volume, core authors, affiliated institutions, cooperation relationships between countries, literature sources, keywords, and citation rates of literature related to mycotoxins over the past 40 years. A total of 19382 articles and 5320 articles were retrieved from the WOS and CNKI databases, respectively, with an overall upward trend in the number of publications over time. China ranked second in terms of the number of collaborative publications between countries, indicating that China has a large number of publications in this field, with a total of 2867 articles, accounting for 14.79% of the total number. The paper entitled Mycotoxins published by Bennett Joshua Ward as the first author, from the United States, had the highest citation count of 2468 and thus, had great influence on the field. Based on the high-frequency keywords, it can be seen that the current research hotspots mainly focused on mycotoxins, oxidative stress, deoxynivalenol, fusarium head blight, fumonisin, and lactic acid bacteria.