Objective To investigate the research status and development trend of ankylosing spondylitis (AS), so as to provide reference for the future research. Methods We retrieved AS-related literatures containing original articles and reviews from the Web of Science database, extracted and analyzed data from Science Citation Index Extended. The items used in the search included: title (ankylosing spondylitis) and year of publication (2009-2018) and language (English). The literature overview, countries and regions, institutions, authors, literature source publications, literature research direction, cited frequency, impact factors, H index and key words were analyzed. Results From 2009 to 2018, a total of 2 759 AS-related publications were collected in the Web of Science database. The country with the largest number of publications was China (612 papers, 22.18%), the institution with the largest number of publications was Leiden University in the Netherlands (102 papers, 3.70%), and the author of most publications was van der Heijde D (103 papers, 3.73%). The research direction of AS was mainly rheumatology (1 473 papers, 53.39%), internal medicine (235 papers, 8.52%), and bone science (195 papers, 7.07%), and literatures were mainly from Rheumatol Int. In 2018, the average impact factor of the top 10 journals was 4.420, accounting for 38.64% (1 066/2 759) of the total literatures. A total of 2 759 articles have been cited 44 772 times (excluding 35 592 times of self-citation), and the average number of citations per article was 16.23. The H index and cited times of the United States, Germany and the Netherlands were significantly higher than those of the other countries, with H indexes all being 51 and cited times being 11 468, 10 132 and 9 494, accounting for 25.61%, 22.63% and 21.21% of the total cited times, respectively. Although China had the largest number of papers, the cited times and H index only ranked the sixth (6 478 cites, H index=31). By using VOSviewer software, we found that the key words were mainly “pathogenesis related”, “genetic related”, “rehabilitation related”, “diagnosis and treatment related” and “disease related”. Conclusion China, Turkey and the United States have the most AS-related articles from 2009 to 2018. Although the number of Chinese publications is far ahead, there is still a certain quality gap of the publications between China and western countries.