Brief report on academic contributions from China on the topic of rheumatic diseases.

Academic contributions by Chinese scholars have grown to take second place worldwide since 2009. However, little was known about Chinese academic contributions and their influence on rheumatic diseases. In order to present an overview of this field, a comprehensive bibliometrics analysis was performed based on data from two databases up to 2015. Since 2013, China has occupied third place regarding the number of rheumatic diseases' publications. Nevertheless, most of these articles were not associated with high impact factors or frequent citations, let alone great influence. Multidisciplinary teams are being formed. Although on the right track, more efforts in all aspects are needed to improve developments in the area of rheumatology in China.