ReviewJournal of materials science. Materials in medicine2025
Advances in hydrogel research: a 25-year bibliometric overview.
Review in Journal of materials science. Materials in medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Hydrogel-Enabled Delivery Systems for Agricultural Resilience: Controlled Release, Soil Interactions and Performance Constraints: A Review.Gels (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Nanosponge-integrated hydrogel ofFrontiers in pharmacology · 2026Article
- Global trends and knowledge structure of graphene based cancer research between 2016 and 2025.Discover oncology · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
This study presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of hydrogel research from 2000 to 2025, examining 101,291 publications from the OpenAlex database to highlight the field's evolution, trends, and impact, providing a better landscape of the field. The analysis demonstrates significant growth in the research output, from ~350 publications in 2000 to nearly 11,000 in 2024, with 37% being open access. Publication patterns demonstrate Physical Sciences leading with about 50,000 publications, followed by Life Sciences (~30,000) and Health Sciences (~21,000). The citation analysis emphasizes that 20% of all citations result from the top 1% of papers, demonstrating the concentration of the research impact. The study identifies key research hubs, with China as a leader in the publication (27,931 publications), while the United States maintains the highest citation impact (>1 million citations). Network analysis reveals increasingly complicated international collaborations, particularly between the United States and China. Topic modeling using Latent Dirichlet Allocation identifies 17 distinct research themes, emphasizing the field's diversification from fundamental material features to advanced applications in the tissue engineering, drug delivery, and regenerative medicine. This analysis provides valuable insights into the dynamic landscape of hydrogel research, highlighting opportunities for future innovation and collaboration.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.