title: Emerging trends in regenerative medicine: a scientometric analysis in CiteSpace.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Regenerative medicine involves research in a number of fields and disciplines such as stem cell research, tissue engineering and biological therapy in general. As research in these areas advances rapidly, it is critical to keep abreast of emerging trends and critical turns of the development of the collective knowledge.
  
  
  METHODS
  A progressively synthesized network is derived from 35,963 original research and review articles that cite 3875 articles obtained from an initial topic search on regenerative medicine between 2000 and 2011. CiteSpace is used to facilitate the analysis of the intellectual structure and emerging trends.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  A major ongoing research trend is concerned with finding alternative reprogramming techniques as well as refining existing ones for induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). A more recent emerging trend focuses on the structural and functional equivalence between iPSCs and human embryonic stem cells and potential clinical and therapeutic implications on regenerative medicine in a long run. The two trends overlap in terms of what they cite, but they are distinct and have different implications on future research. Visual analytics of the literature provides a valuable, timely, repeatable and flexible approach in addition to traditional systematic reviews so as to track the development of new emerging trends and identify critical evidence.
authors.affiliation: Drexel University, College of Information Science and Technology, 3141 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104-2875, USA chaomei.chen@drexel.edu
authors.forename: Chaomei
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Zhigang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Shengbo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Hung
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tseng
mesh_terms: D053595:Embryonic Stem Cells / Q000166:cytology; D006801:Humans; D044968:Regenerative Medicine