Cotton leaf curl disease (CLCuD), caused by viruses of the family Geminiviridae (genus Begomovirus), is of great concern for cotton production worldwide. The aim of the study was to characterize and quantify the worldwide scientific output of CLCuD research using bibliometric analysis. PubMed, Google Scholar and Scopus search engines were used to extract available data from 1901 to July 2017. A total of 854 CLCuD-related published documents were identified. Most of the documents were published in the form of original research articles (644, 75.4 %) and English was the main language of publication (807, 94 %). The results demonstrate that the study of CLCuD exhibits an overall increasing trend from 1991 to 2017, with the highest number of articles published in 2013. The top 10 countries in terms of absolute research output (number of publications) on this subject were Pakistan (217; 25.40%), India (161; 18.85%), the United States of America (USA; 122; 14.85%), China (85; 9.95%), United Kingdom (57; 6.67%), Sudan (31; 3.62%), Israel (14; 1.63%), Spain (13; 1.52%), Australia (11; 1.28%), Saudi Arabia (9; 1.05%) and Iran (9; 1.05%). Pakistan's most important collaborator was United States of America, followed by China. Noteworthy, not one of the papers listed here was the result of scientific collaboration between India and Pakistan. The total number of citations for all the publications was 3174, with an average of 3.71 citations per publication. The h-index for all extracted data related to CLCuD was 91. The top h-index was achieved by Pakistan (54) followed by the United Kingdom (43), the USA (41) and India (39). The National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (NIBGE), Faisalabad, ranked the first in the top 10 list of the most productive institutes. This bibliometric analysis highlights the leading role of Pakistan, India and the USA in research on CLCuD and points out that the initiation of a collaboration between Pakistan and India may have a significant impact on the research output and progress.