Abstract: The pneumonia of unknown origin occurred in Wuhan in December 2019 was finally confirmed to be a novel coronavirus infection, provisionally designated as 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that cause diseases in birds, mammals, and humans, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), etc. In the past two decades, global researches have been accomplished to identify the mechanisms how coronaviruses transmitted between species from animals to humans, as well as the pathologic mechanisms. In this paper, we applied the bibliometric methods, citation analysis, and knowledge mapping methods, to explore the research status and trends in coronavirus, and to reveal the conceptual knowledge venation in coronavirus literatures, in oder to provide references for future coronavirus research.