2 METHODOLOGY

2.1 Data Collection and Search Strategy

Web of Science (WoS, Clarivate Analytics) is the authoritative database for bibliometric investigation owning to the existence of the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) and the large amount of citation data. Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC), as the premier resource on the WoS database, was used to collect information on literature about antibody mimetics. The searched time span is 1986-2022 (Data as of 31 Dec. 2022). All key words related to the topic were combined with Boolean operators before starting the search for documents as which serves as an effective search strategy. The search terms and retrieval strategies were developed as follows: TS (Topical Subject) = (antibody mimetics OR antibody mimetic OR affibody OR adnectin OR aptamer OR affimer OR affitin OR affilin OR anticalin OR atrimer OR Avimer OR Knottin) OR TI (Title) = (antibody mimetics OR antibody mimetic OR affibody OR adnectin OR aptamer OR affimer OR affitin OR affilin OR anticalin OR atrimer OR Avimer OR Knottin) OR AK  (Author Keywords) = (antibody mimetics OR antibody mimetic OR affibody OR adnectin OR aptamer OR affimer OR affitin OR affilin OR anticalin OR atrimer OR Avimer OR Knottin) OR AB (Abstract) = (antibody mimetics OR antibody mimetic OR affibody OR adnectin OR aptamer OR affimer OR affitin OR affilin OR anticalin OR atrimer OR Avimer OR Knottin); the language type = English; and the document type = articles or reviews or book or book chapter. All data obtained were saved in text format and imported into software for analysis. To ensure the comprehensiveness of our study, we systematically collected and analysed the terms relevant to antibody mimetics from published reviews to define the keywords, aiming to minimize the risk of omitting important information or introduce irrelevant papers.

2.2 Statistical analysis

Microsoft Office Excel (v.2016) was conducted for literature quantity analysis. CiteSpace 6.1.R6 software was used to depict network maps of keywords, journals, and countries. Basic elements in the map include labels and lines. Items are represented by circular labels and the size of the label determined by the weight of the item, which demonstrate the importance of the items. Lines between items represent links, which is a connection or a relation between two items (Wu et al., 2022 ). The distance between two keywords in the figure demonstrates the rate of co-occurrence of them on a paper or the relationship between two research areas (Chen, 2006 ).