I would do this
library(stringr)
single_cell <- "Albuquerque (1992) Stat Med, Lasagna (1993) J Cran, Receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) plots: a tool in medicine (1993) Clin Chem"
str_extract_all(single_cell, "(?<=\\d{4}\\)\\s).+?(?=(,|$))")
#> [[1]]
#> [1] "Stat Med" "J Cran" "Clin Chem"