Abstract: In order to investigate the research trends of global tobacco industry, CORESTA conference papers published from 1980 to 2016 were statistically analyzed with bibliometric methods in terms of author distribution, affiliations and countries, status of cooperation, prominent research topics and their evolution. The results showed that:1) The amount of CORESTA conference papers increased slowly in general, and USA, China, UK, Japan, France, Germany were leading in the number of papers presented. 2) The cooperation between authors or affiliations presented a "high cohesion and low coupling". While UK, France, and USA were the top 3 in cooperating with other countries. 3) In 1980-2016, prominent research topics were different in each passing decades and became diverse in recent years, while the research on novel (or next generation) tobacco products became one of them. These results provide a reference for researchers of tobacco industry in identifying and promoting scientific innovation and technical development.