Objective  To examine hotspots and trends in frontier researches on vaccine and vaccination for the improvement of planned immunization policies in China.

  Methods  Through the database of Web of Science, we searched relevant literatures published during 2009 – 2019 using the boolean phrase "vaccine* AND attitude". After excluding duplications, we conducted analyses on country- and institution-specific number of studies published, journal-specific number of citations, author-specific impact factors, frequency of key words, and weight of mutated key words for the 2 537 studies finally included using CiteSpace software.

  Results  The top three countries with high number (n) and centrality index (CI) of the studies published were United States (n = 1 096, CI = 0.44), Australia (n = 198, CI = 0.21), and the United Kingdom (n = 197, CI = 0.21). The institution with the highest number and centrality index of the published studies was United State Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (n = 135, CI = 0.30). The most of the institutions with higher CI of the published studies were universities. The journal with the highest number of citations and CI was Vaccine (n = 2 037, CI = 0.43). The researcher with the highest number of citations (309) for the published studies was Brewer NT and the author with the highest CI (0.23) for the published studies was Dempsey AF. The researcher with the highest number of studies published during the 10 years was Zimet GD. The high-frequency key words for the published literatures were attitude, vaccine, human papillomavirus vaccination and vaccine hesitancy was the mutant word with the highest weight.

  Conclusion  Independent and collaborative studies on vaccine and vaccination need to be promoted in China.