Knowledge graph and frontier trends in melanoma-associated ncRNAs: a bibliometric analysis from 2006 to 2023.

Objectives: Malignant melanoma (MM) is a highly malignant skin tumor. Although research on non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) of MM has advanced swiftly in recent years, no specific bibliometric analyses have been conducted on this topic. The present study aims to summarize the knowledge graphs and frontier trends and to provide new perspectives and direction of collaboration for researchers.

Method: Research data on melanoma and ncRNA published from January 1, 2006 to October 9, 2023 were retrieved and extracted from Web of Science. R Studio (Version 4.3.1), Scimago Graphica (Version 1.0.36), VOSviewer version (1.6.19), and Citespace (6.2.4R) were used to analyze the publications, countries, journals, institutions, authors, keywords, references, and other relevant data and to build collaboration network graphs and co-occurrence network graphs accordingly.

Results: A total of 1,222 articles were retrieved, involving 4,894 authors, 385 journals, 43,220 references, 2413 keywords, and 1,651 institutions in 47 countries. The average annual growth rate in the number of articles was 25.02% from 2006 to 2023; among all the journals, Plos One had the highest number of publications and citations, which are 42 publications and 2,228 citations, respectively. Chinese researchers were the most prolific publishers in this field, having published a total of 657 articles, among which 42 were published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which was the most productive institution. In recent years, the most explored keywords included long non-coding RNAs, immunotherapy, and exosm. According to the timeline chart of reference co-citation, "functional role" has been the most explored hotspot since 2015, and human cancer is a newly emerged hotspot after 2021.

Conclusion: Through a bibliometric analysis, this study included all publications on ncRNAs and melanoma that were published in English from 2006 to 2023 in Web of Science to analyze the trends in the number of publications, international research focuses, and the direction of collaboration. The results of this study may provide information on knowledge graph, frontier trends and identify research topics in melanoma. More current research proved that ncRNA plays a crucial role in the biological behavior of melanoma including proliferation, invasion, metastasis, drug resistance, etc. With the development of research on ncRNA and melanoma, ncRNA may great potential in development of early diagnosis, targeted therapy and efficacy evaluation in the future. The results of this study also provide new perspectives and research partners for researchers in this field.