Objective Through the bibliometric analysis, to learn the overall situation and trend of research on occupational disease in China.

Methods Based on the data collected in the CNKI and Wanfang series database, the number of annual published Chinese articles, the journals, the research direction, the citation analysis and the authors' organization were analyzed by the method of bibliometric.

Results Totally 28 193 articles were collected and 2 617 articles were cited by other authors. It was noted that the promulgation of the Law on Prevention and Control of Occupational Disease in 2002 promoted the research related to occupational disease and the number of published articles seemed to be stable after 2012. The top 3 journals which published the largest number of articles were "Occupation and health", "Chinese Journal of Industrial Medicine" and "Occupational Health and Emergency Rescue". The most authors were from the institutes related to occupational health and medicine, such as the provincial occupational disease hospital. The key words included pneumoconiosis, occupational poisoning, protective measures and occupational health evaluation, indicating that these areas were hot topics in recent years.

Conclusion The research on occupational disease has received more and more attention in China, but the quality of research are expecting to be improved for prevention and control of occupational disease.