Global trends of solar desalination research: A bibliometric analysis during 2010-2021 and focus on Morocco

The demand for water is steadily increasing and water supplies are rapidly depleting, leading to a global water scarcity crisis. To bridge the gap between water availability and human needs, unconventional solutions such as solar desalination have been proposed. This technique makes use of the two most abundant resources on the planet - salt water and solar energy - to create fresh water. To evaluate the global scientific output on solar desalination research, a bibliometric approach was adopted. Data from Scopus revealed 6374 publications related to solar desalination up until 2021, with 70 % of them being articles. Most of these publications were produced in the last 12 years (period studied in this paper). The largest numbers of publications were found in the fields of "Engineering" (21 %) "Energy" (18 %) and "Environmental Science" (16 %). India had the highest number of publications (1080), but China had the most influential research, with 895 papers cited 30,114 times (h-index = 83) - more than the Indian corpus (23,634 citations and h-index = 78). The average international collaboration rate was 26.2 %. In Morocco, the interest in solar desalination research only began after 2000, yet the country quickly rose to the top 25 most productive countries in the field, with a high quality of publication.