Scientometric analysis and knowledge mapping of literature-based discovery (1986-2020).

Literature-based discovery (LBD) aims to discover valuable latent relationships between disparate sets of literatures. LBD research has undergone an evolution from being an emerging area to a mature research field. Hence it is timely and necessary to summarize the LBD literature and scrutinize general bibliographic characteristics, current and future publication trends, and its intellectual structure. This paper presents the first inclusive scientometric overview of LBD research. We utilize a comprehensive scientometric approach incorporating CiteSpace to systematically analyze the literature on LBD from the last four decades (1986-2020). After manual cleaning, we have retrieved a total of 409 documents from six bibliographic databases (Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, and Springer Link) and two preprint servers (ArXiv and BiorXiv). The results have shown that Thomas C. Rindflesch published the highest number of LBD papers, followed by Don R. Swanson. The United States plays a leading role in LBD research with the University of Chicago as the dominant institution. To go deeper, we also perform science mapping including cascading citation expansion. The knowledge base of LBD research has changed significantly since its inception, with emerging topics including deep learning and explainable artificial intelligence. The results have indicated that LBD is still growing and evolving. Drawing on our insights, we now better understand the historical progress of LBD in the last 35 years and are able to improve publishing practices to contribute to the field in the future.