This study mapped global salidroside research from 2000 to 2025 using CiteSpace, identified publication trends, leading authors and institutions, major research hotspots, and emerging directions in its pharmacological applications.
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Research Article
This study mapped global salidroside research from 2000 to 2025 using CiteSpace, identified publication trends, leading authors and institutions, major research hotspots, and emerging directions in its pharmacological applications.
Salidroside exerts a broad spectrum of pharmacological activities and represents a promising drug candidate for multiple ailments, including myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury, acute lung injury, and Alzheimer’s disease; nonetheless, quantitative and systematic overviews mapping its full research landscape remain inadequate. In this study, relevant publications from 2000 to 2025 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection. Bibliometric and visual analyses were conducted using CiteSpace and Microsoft Excel. A total of 1400 eligible papers were included. Annual publication output increased gradually before 2010 and accelerated thereafter. Investigators across 62 countries have contributed to this field, with core research clusters centered at institutions such as China Pharmaceutical University. Keyword co‑occurrence analysis reveals that research hotspots center on salidroside’s anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and anti-apoptotic properties, and research has increasingly focused on respiratory, neurological, and cardiovascular disorders through modulation of NF-κB, HIF-1α, and NLRP3 signaling cascades. Meanwhile, salidroside production has evolved from conventional herbal extraction toward industrial fermentation, and its pharmacological exploration has expanded beyond anti‑aging and anti‑hypoxia bioactivity to encompass anti‑tumor efficacy and multi‑organ protection.
Salidroside is a phenylethanoid glycoside derived from a range of medicinal plants, including the traditional Chinese medicine herb Rhodiola crenulata (Dahuahongjingtian), Ligustrum lucidum (Nüzhenzi), Cistanche deserticola (Roucongrong), Eleutherococcus senticosus (Ciwujia), Sargentodoxa cuneata (Daxueteng), as well as Acer tegmentosum Maxim (Qingjieqi)1,2,3,4. It exhibits prominent pharmacological effects encompassing antioxidant, anti‑inflammatory, anti‑hypoxic, anti‑fatigue, and neuroprotective activities, and has been incorporated into multiple traditional Chinese medicinal preparations such as Nodikang Capsules, Jinlian Capsules, and Zhenqi Fuzheng Capsules5,6,7. Salidroside has shown tremendous potential in combating central nervous system disorders (such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and ischemic stroke), managing metabolic diseases, and delaying senescence, thus emerging as a research hotspot in the field of natural product research and new drug development. With the advancement of molecular biology techniques, the molecular mechanisms of salidroside in regulating key signaling pathways, including nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor (Nrf2), NOD‑like receptor pyrin domain‑containing protein 3 (NLRP3), and Nuclear Factor Kappa B (NF-κB), ameliorating mitochondrial function and modulating autophagy have been continuously elucidated, with a massive volume of relevant literature accumulated to date8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17.
Bibliometrics, initially categorized as statistical bibliography, is a discipline applying mathematical and statistical methods to bibliographic documents. It quantitatively analyzes a massive body of literature to reveal development trajectories, research hotspots, frontiers, and academic collaboration networks. Early on, librarians used it to identify core journals, optimize collections, and support acquisition decisions18. CiteSpace visualizes the evolution of specific knowledge domains through text mining. Compared with another bibliometric visualization tool based on VOSviewer, it offers unique features such as Timezone View and Timeline View, which clearly display the rise and fall, division, and integration of research topics over the years. Using co-occurrence, co-citation, and cluster analysis, it generates knowledge maps to pinpoint key literature, authors, institutions, and emerging fronts, earning it the title of “scientific knowledge mapping radar”19.
Research on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) boasts a long history, backed by abundant archival literature. However, existing studies span a wide range of research themes, from the natural plant extraction and bioengineering synthesis of salidroside to investigations of its pharmacological mechanisms against diverse diseases, as well as extensive research on its combined medication regimens.
To date, research concerning salidroside has yielded substantial progress. Although numerous reviews have summarized salidroside's pharmacological activities, quantitative assessments of publication trends, collaboration patterns, research hotspots, and emerging topics remain limited. Accordingly, this study uses CiteSpace 6.4.R1 to conduct a visual analysis of publication output, focusing on the authors, affiliated institutions, and keywords of salidroside-related papers published between 2000 and 2025. It characterizes the evolution of research trends and hot topics over the past 25 years and identifies emerging research directions and potential future hotspots (Figure 1).
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Data sources and retrieval strategy
All raw data used in this study were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database20,21. The study period spans from January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2025, and the literature search was conducted on May 27, 2026. The specific search formula was set as:
TS=(Salidroside OR Rhodioloside OR Rhodosin OR "2-(4-Hydroxyphenyl)ethyl β-D-glucopyranoside" OR "p-Hydroxyphenethyl glucopyranoside" OR Tyrosol β-D-glucopyranoside OR Sallidroside) AND FPY=2000-2025.
Literature inclusion and exclusion criteria
In this study, only articles and reviews from the Web of Science Core Collection were included in the analysis, with English as the language restriction. Other document types, including Meeting Abstract, Retracted Publication, Correction, Retraction, Proceeding Paper, Editorial Material, Early Access, Letter, and Publication with Expression of Concern, were excluded from further analysis.
Data processing and visualization
All retrieved literature was exported in RefWorks format as a download.txt file, which was subsequently imported into CiteSpace 6.4.R1 for data conversion and analysis22. Prior to analysis, two researchers conducted manual screening to eliminate duplicate records. We compared basic metadata to spot duplicates and thoroughly checked entries with discrepant information for accurate identification.
To ensure accurate identification by the software, keyword unification was applied to the retrieved entries. For instance, variants including “nf kappa b” and “nuclear factor-kappab” were standardized to “NF-κB”, while “interleukin‑6” and “il 6” were consolidated as “IL-6”; further standardized items are listed in the supplementary table. After manual screening, all institutions are presented with their current official names, with no outdated names or secondary affiliated units involved. No authors have alternative names. Sovereign states are taken as the criterion for counting national publications. All records originally marked as “Taiwan” were reclassified under “China”23.
Detailed parameter configurations are as follows: the research time span was set from 2000 to 2025 with a 2-year slicing interval, and no publications were identified for the year 2000. Node types were selected as author, institution, and keyword, alongside a fixed g-index value of 25. The g-index threshold of 25 was adopted in line with common practices in bibliometric studies. This threshold effectively excludes scattered low-impact nodes while retaining core research entities and major cooperative relationships. The Link Retaining Factor was set to 2.5, and Maximum Links Per Node was limited to 10. For burst detection of visualized keywords, γ was assigned as 0.724,25. This coefficient ranges from 0 to 1; higher γ values impose stricter screening criteria, retaining only keywords with extremely strong burst strength. Meanwhile, Minimum Duration was set to 2, meaning a keyword is marked as a valid burst term only if its research hot spot persists for at least 2 consecutive years. All literature screening was performed manually by two reviewers independently, and discrepancies were resolved through discussion to reach consensus.
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Analysis of publication trends
A total of 1468 publications were retrieved spanning 2000 to 2025. After document screening, only 1293 original Articles and 107 Review Articles were retained. Publications remained scarce from 2000 to 2010, indicating preliminary and sporadic exploration of salidroside research. No relevant papers were published in 2000, 2004, 2005, and 2009, and no stable research communities had formed during this period, with only a small number of researcher...
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This study adopted bibliometric approaches based on publications retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection spanning 2000 to 2025. Through systematic quantitative visualization, we mapped global research output, institutional collaboration landscapes, and shifting research hotspots surrounding salidroside, delineating stage-specific developmental trajectories across the 25-year analytical window. The field has advanced in distinct progressive phases. Prior to 2011, overall publication volume remained low, research...
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The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
This work is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province (2024NSFSC0697).
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| Name | Company | Catalog Number | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| CiteSpace 6.4.R1 | Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA | https://citespace.podia.com | Bibliometric visualization software |
| Microsoft Excel 2021 | Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA, USA | https://www.microsoft.com/microsoft-365/excel | Software for manual screening and merging of keywords, institutions and other items |
| Web of Science Core Collection database | Clarivate, Philadelphia, PA, USA | https://www.webofscience.com | Online citation database |
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