Objective To investigate the current research and development trend of sepsis, so as to provide reference for fu⁃ ture studies. Methods Sepsis⁃related articles were retrieved from the Web of Science database, extracted and analyzed on the basis of the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI⁃E). The included articles were research articles. Then, literature overview, countries and regions, institutions, authors, literature source publications, literature research direction, citation frequency, impact factors, H index and key words were analyzed. Results From 2010 to 2020, a total of 10 965 articles were collected from the Web of Science data⁃ base. The country with the largest number of publication was the United States (3 318 papers, 30.260%), followed by China (2 404 pa⁃ pers, 21.924%). The institution with the largest number of publication was University of Pittsburgh (222 papers, 2.025%). Meanwhile, the author with the most published articles was Tom van der Poll (89 papers, 0.812%) from University of Amsterdam in the Nether⁃ lands. The main subjects associated with sepsis were internal medicine (2 872 papers, 26.192%), immunology (1 171 papers, 10.679%), experimental medicine (963 papers, 8.782%), surgery (887 papers, 8.089%) and pediatrics (819 papers, 7.469%). In 2019, the average impact factor of the top ten journals based on the number of publication was 5.252, and articles from the top ten journals ac⁃ counted for 21.61% (2 369/10 965) of the retrieval results. The H index of American authors was 124, with a total citation frequency of 114 594 times and an average of 33.78 times per item, whose H index and citation frequency were remarkably higher than those in oth⁃ er countries. According to the results of VOSviewer software, the key words associated with sepsis were mainly“disease related”, “pathogenesis related”,“diagnosis and treatment related”,“experiment related”, and“prognosis related”. Conclusions The Unit⁃ed States, China, and Germany published the most sepsis⁃related articles from 2010 to 2020, with the fastest increase in publication in China. Although China had the second largest number of publication in recent ten year, and the largest volume of publication in 2020, there is still a certain quality gap of the publications between China and Western countries.