Objective  To explore the current status, hotspots and emerging research trends of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) research through bibliometric analysis to provide reference for future studies.

Methods  CNKI and Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection databases were retrieved for literatures related to IPF from 1 January 2015 through 31 December 2024. Citespace software was used to conduct co-occurrence analyses of institutions, authors and keywords, and detect burst keywords.

Results  A total of 526 literatures in Chinese and 10,101 literatures in English were included. The number of publications fluctuates, but it exhibited a general increasing trend every year. The United States contributed the most significant number of publications, followed by China and Japan. China Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Pharmacy and Respiratory Research were the journal with the most publications. The Pang Lijian and the Affiliated Hospital of Liaoning University of Traditional Chinese Medicine were the author and institution with the most publication numbers in Chinese. The University of California and Toby Maher published the highest number of English literatures. Keyword co-occurrence analysis revealed that the high frequency keywords were “pirfenidone”, “nintedanib”, and “oxidative stress” in Chinese literatures, “diagnosis”, “expression”, and “survival” in English literatures. Based on timeline and burst analysis of keywords, the keywords changed from “quality of life”, “traditional Chinese medicine”, and “immune cell” to “autophagy”, “clinical trials”, and “risk factors” in Chinese literatures, and from “placebo controlled trials”, “acute exacerbation”, and “alveolitis” to “air pollution”, “machine learning”, and “deep learning” in English literatures.

Conclusion  Early diagnosis, pathogenesis, acute exacerbation, medication and survival have become hot spots in recent studies. Chinese studies focus on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and the rehabilitation of TCM therapy, while English studies focus more on the epidemiology and etiology of IPF. The field of IPF research will move from typical technologies to novel technologies such as network pharmacology and artificial intelligence.

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