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Frontiers of Earth Science

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Front. Earth Sci.    2022, Vol. 16 Issue (2) : 340-351    https://doi.org/10.1007/s11707-021-0875-z
RESEARCH ARTICLE
A novel bibliometric and visual analysis of global geoscience research using landscape indices
Xin AI1,2, Mingguo MA1,2, Xuemei WANG2(), Honghai KUANG3()
1. Chongqing Jinfo Mountain Karst Ecosystem National Observation and Research Station, School of Geographical Sciences, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
2. Southwest University Library, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
3. Chongqing Engineering Research Center for Remote Sensing Big Data Application, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
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Abstract

The landscape index is a quantitative index which reflects characteristics of structure composition and spatial pattern in landscape studies, it is, therefore, expected to describe the spatial pattern of scientific research in bibliometric analysis. In this study, a novel attempt to regard scientific research as a kind of ‘landscape’ was made, and landscape indices were improved for bibliometric analysis to measure the spatial pattern of scientific research. For illustrating the feasibility of our method, global geoscience research from 1994 to 2018 was presented as a case. Moreover, spatiotemporal migration of landscape centroids was visualized. The results indicated that global geoscience publications increased steadily and articles were highly concentrated at the country level. The top 10 countries published 69.93% of total articles and 84.68% of geoscience articles were from top 20 productive countries. The spatial migration of centroids was mainly reflected in the longitude because of significant increasing of articles in eastern countries, especially in China with the growth rate of 747.14%. At the patch scale, the change trend of improved landscape indices verified the spatiotemporal changes of global distribution of geoscience articles. At the landscape scale, the strengthening of global international collaboration is the main driving forces of spatial heterogeneity of global geoscience research. This study is expected to help readers to understand global trends of geoscience research in the past 25 years, and to promote the development of bibliometric analysis towards the directions of spatialization and visualization.
Keywords geoscience      landscape index      visualization      Geographical Information System      bibliometric analysis     
Corresponding Author(s): Xuemei WANG,Honghai KUANG   
About author: Tongcan Cui and Yizhe Hou contributed equally to this work.
Online First Date: 02 June 2021    Issue Date: 26 August 2022
 Cite this article:   
Xin AI,Mingguo MA,Xuemei WANG, et al. A novel bibliometric and visual analysis of global geoscience research using landscape indices[J]. Front. Earth Sci., 2022, 16(2): 340-351.
 URL:  
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fesci/EN/10.1007/s11707-021-0875-z
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fesci/EN/Y2022/V16/I2/340
Fig.1  Characteristics by year of geoscience publications.
Country TA R/% TC Single country International collaboration??
SA % CA % MC(n)
USA 240234 1(25.63) 8438483 134124 0.56 106110 0.44 China (18682)
China 104285 2(11.13) 1709506 63844 0.61 40441 0.39 USA (18682)
UK 76597 3(8.17) 2529759 27809 0.36 48788 0.64 USA (17093)
Germany 70167 4(7.49) 2091571 22760 0.32 47407 0.68 USA (14435)
France 62696 6(6.69) 1895582 20409 0.33 42287 0.67 USA (12687)
Canada 50773 7(5.42) 1401954 22300 0.44 28473 0.56 USA (12975)
Russia 47835 8(5.10) 468937 33454 0.70 14381 0.30 USA (3737)
Japan 42213 9(4.50) 996393 22439 0.53 19774 0.47 USA (7661)
Australia 39681 10(4.23) 1228738 15088 0.38 24593 0.62 USA (7768)
Italy 39439 11(4.21) 974046 18251 0.46 21188 0.54 USA (5694)
India 26641 12(2.84) 362335 19639 0.74 7002 0.26 USA (2331)
Spain 24875 13(2.65) 581668 9307 0.37 15568 0.63 USA (3721)
Switzerland 21240 14(2.27) 749589 4986 0.23 16254 0.77 USA (5089)
Netherlands 19385 15(2.07) 675857 5642 0.29 13743 0.71 USA (3973)
Norway 15160 16(1.62) 413244 4277 0.28 10883 0.72 USA (3391)
Sweden 14087 17(1.50) 403501 3899 0.28 10188 0.72 USA (3086)
Brazil 12583 18(1.34) 244730 5825 0.46 6758 0.54 USA (2343)
South Korea 10037 20(1.07) 188733 4542 0.45 5495 0.55 USA (2880)
Poland 9808 21(1.05) 118691 5733 0.58 4075 0.42 USA (852)
Austria 9399 22(1.00) 249192 2083 0.22 7316 0.78 Germany (2611)
Tab.1  Top 20 productive countries in geoscience research
Patch type Number of articles in
global geoscience research
I No published articles
II Less than 100
III 101?500
IV 501?1000
V 1001?2500
VI 2501?5000
VII 5001?10000
VIII More than 10000
Tab.2  Classification and definition of the patch types
Fig.2  The number of countries of each patch.
Fig.3  The number of articles of each patch.
Type Year NP PD (×103) LPI/% PLAND/%
I 1994 82 5.72 — —
1998 80 3.73 — —
2002 77 2.92 — —
2006 75 1.98 — —
2010 74 1.49 — —
2014 55 0.78 — —
2018 55 0.66 — —
II 1994 23 1.68 3.01 8.51
1998 21 1.38 1.27 5.24
2002 35 1.23 1.19 5.14
2006 35 1.09 1.21 4.93
2010 36 0.78 1.04 4.52
2014 54 0.74 0.88 3.69
2018 56 0.60 0.69 2.60
III 1994 7 0.45 3.71 16.45
1998 10 0.45 3.24 17.17
2002 11 0.36 3.26 13.84
2006 13 0.34 3.04 15.01
2010 13 0.25 3.48 13.19
2014 14 0.21 1.56 7.33
2018 15 0.17 1.29 7.13
IV 1994 6 0.17 5.34 12.46
1998 5 0.12 4.51 11.21
2002 4 0.13 2.16 7.68
2006 4 0.10 2.48 8.20
2010 4 0.08 2.68 6.78
2014 9 0.15 3.32 12.69
2018 10 0.11 2.53 9.37
V 1994 5 0.22 8.91 29.41
1998 5 0.20 12.82 37.64
2002 6 0.19 16.33 47.72
2006 5 0.13 16.63 41.11
2010 8 0.14 7.45 26.77
2014 7 0.10 5.63 23.06
2018 7 0.08 2.67 13.67
VI 1994 0 — — —
1998 0 — — —
2002 0 — — —
2006 1 0.03 7.47 7.47
2010 3 0.06 12.49 27.87
2014 3 0.04 11.51 21.54
2018 2 0.06 7.99 21.27
VII 1994 1 0.06 33.17 33.17
1998 1 0.04 28.74 28.74
2002 1 0.03 25.62 25.62
2006 1 0.03 23.27 23.27
2010 0 — — —
2014 1 0.01 12.72 12.72
2018 2 0.02 6.03 12.02
VIII 1994 0 — — —
1998 0 — — —
2002 0 — — —
2006 0 — — —
2010 1 0.02 20.87 20.87
2014 1 0.01 18.96 18.96
2018 2 0.02 17.19 33.93
Tab.3  Patch-scale publication pattern index
Year ARTICLE-MN SHDI SHEI
1994 120.42 1.49 0.92
1998 168.71 1.43 0.89
2002 205.23 1.33 0.82
2006 270.15 1.54 0.86
2010 354.17 1.63 0.91
2014 489.15 1.82 0.94
2018 576.62 1.73 0.92
Tab.4  Landscape-scale publication pattern index
Fig.4  Spatiotemporal changes of the landscape centroids of the geoscience articles during 1994 to 2018.
Fig.5  Relationship between SHDI and number of ICAs.
Fig.6  Relationship between SHEI and number of ICAs.
Landscape index Type Equations R2
SHDI Linear fit y = 1.926×10-5x + 1.3637 0.6582
SHEI Polynomial fit y = 2.11×10-10x2- 2.86×10-6x + 0.8916 0.2406
Tab.5  The correlation between ICAs and SHDI and SHEI
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