Objective  To examine the profile and trend of researches on Ebola virus for providing references to the control of emerging and severe infectious diseases and biosafety in China.

  Methods  We searched Ebola virus-related studies published till 2017 and analyzed hotspots and trends of the researches using bibliometrics and mapping knowledge domain method.

  Results  Totally 4 086 papers were included in the analysis. Three periods with different increment in number of papers published yearly were 1977 – 1994, 1995 – 2013, and 2014 – 2017, with a great increment in recent years. The top five countries with a higher number of published studies are the United States, Britain, Germany, Canada and France and there were close cooperations for many of the published studies among the five countries. China is the sixth country for more published studies, ninth for the number of studies cited and tenth for the mean citation frequency of a published study. The included studies mainly involved following 6 academic disciplines: virus epidemiology, virus detection, genetic mechanism, etiology and transmission mechanism, pathogenesis and host immune response, and treatment and development of medicine.

  Conclusion  The research on Ebola virus has been increased continuously during the past decade in the world, especially in western developed countries. However, China is at a backward situation in the research field and it is necessary to consider the possible risk of national biosafety associated with the prevention and control of new infectious epidemics.