Bibliometrics

Bibliometrics is the quantitative analysis of publications and citations. Applied to a body of literature, it maps how a research field is structured, how it has developed over time, and which works, authors, institutions and countries have shaped it — an evidence-based complement to a narrative literature review.

The main techniques are citation analysis, co-citation analysis (documents frequently cited together form intellectual clusters), bibliographic coupling (documents sharing references address related problems), co-authorship analysis for collaboration networks, and co-word or keyword co-occurrence analysis for thematic structure.

VOSviewer, Biblioshiny (the R Bibliometrix interface) and CiteSpace are the common tools, and data is exported from Scopus or Web of Science. Because results depend entirely on the search query and database chosen, document both precisely. A bibliometric analysis is often published as a standalone review paper and can form a strong opening chapter of a thesis.