[Objective]Accumulating evidence implies that long non-coding RNAs(lncRNAs)play a crucial role in predicting survival for hepatocellular cancer(HCC)patients."Prognosis" and "biomarker" were located in the core of the HCC research hotspot.This study aims to capture the current research hotspots of HCC,based on the analysis of publications related to HCC research from 2013 to 2017,and to identify a novel lncRNA signature for HCC prognosis through the data mining in The Cancer Genome Atlas(TCGA).[Methods]The associations between survival outcome and the expression of lncRNAs were evaluated by the univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression analyses.A risk score was set up based on the results of Cox proportional hazards regression analyses to measure the prognosis of HCC patients.Gene set enrichment analysis was performed to find out the related pathways.[Results]Four lncRNAs(LINC00261,TRELM3P,GBP1P1 and CDKN2B-ASI)were identified as significantly correlated with overall survival(OS).These four lncRNAs were gathered as a single prognostic signature.There was a significant positive correlaion between HCC patients with low-risk scores and overall survival(HR=1.802,95%CI: 1.224-2.652,P=0.003).Further analysis suggested that the prognostic value of this four-lncRNA signature was independent in clinical features.Gene set enrichment analysis found that these four lncRNAs were correlated with several molecular pathways of the tumor.[Conclusion]Our study indicates that this novel lncRNA expression signature may be a useful biomarker of the prognosis for HCC patients,based on bioinformatics analysis.