UNLABELLED: An abundance of publications on medical professionalism have been published in recent years. Our study aimed to analyze the external characteristics of publications on professionalism using bibliometrics, to describe its current developments and trends, and to explore professionalism research hotspots using co-word analysis. We retrieved literature on professionalism published from 2010 to 2019 from the Web of Science database. Histcite and CiteSpace were used to analyze external characteristics of publications, including publication trends and distributions of publications by country/region, institution, author, and journal. Co-word analysis was conducted to analyze research hotspots, using the Bibliographic Item Co-Occurrence Matrix Builder and Graphical Clustering Toolkit. We constructed a strategic diagram to show the state of each research hotspot and the relationship between the various hotspots in this field. Results showed publications on professionalism increased in number year by year as a whole. The USA, including its institutions and authors, maintained the top position worldwide in terms of numbers of publications and citations. Among scholarly journals, has published more articles and has had higher citations per paper than any other journal. Six research hotspots on professionalism were identified, visualized, and expounded. Of these, the theme of "measurement and evaluation of clinical competence" received the most attention in the field of professionalism. The reporting of quantifiable knowledge on the characteristics and research hotspots of publications could help inform gaps in the field of medical professionalism and provide evidence and guidance for future work for researchers, physicians, and educators. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11192-021-03993-0.