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 ).