Objective To analyze the progress and current status of ethical research in the field of organ donation and transplantation in China by bibliometric analysis.

Methods Literature review was conducted from CNKI between January 2000 to December 2023. The number of published articles, the cooperation network of core authors, the cooperation network of publication institutions, the co-occurrence of keywords, the emergent keywords and the clustering of keywords were analyzed by CiteSpace 6.2.6.

Results A total of 399 valid articles were obtained. The three peaks in the trend of published articles were affected by current policy events and the development of transplantation technology. From 2000 to 2014, the number of published articles showed an upward trend. At this stage, these studies focused on ethical speculation in the field of organ donation and transplantation. From 2015 to 2023, the number of published articles showed a fluctuating trend. During this stage, these researches highlighted the work system of donation and transplantation and ethical issues in medical practice. Organ donation and ethical review after citizen death became the research frontiers. The co-occurrence knowledge map of authors reflected that the authors mainly served as single nodes, lacking of communication among authors. Twenty-five core authors were identified. Diverse publication institutions were searched including medical departments from colleges and universities, ethics research institutions, organ transplantation departments from hospitals, ethics committees from hospitals and human Organ Procurement Organization (OPO), etc. The First Hospital of Kunming published the largest number of articles. A total of 252 keywords and 13 emergent words were extracted. The keywords with the highest degree of emergency consisted of brain death, organ donation, legislation and ethical review. A total of 14 keyword clusters were generated, including organ transplantation, organ donation, organ donation after citizen’s death, ethics, ethical review and medical staff.

Conclusions The cooperation among authors and institutions is insufficient in the field of organ donation and transplantation ethics. Multi-center research and cooperation among authors should be strengthened. Extensive efforts should be made to strengthen the exploration and empirical research of ethical issues based on current work system and medical practice, aiming to provide ethical basis and defense for the reform and practice of organ donation and transplantation.