Global research trends in landslides during 1991–2014: a bibliometric analysis

A bibliometric analysis was conducted to evaluate landslide research from different perspectives during the period 1991–2014 based on the Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index databases. Based on a sample of 10,567 articles that were related to landslides, the bibliometric analysis revealed the scientific outputs, science categories, source titles, global geographical distribution of the authors, productive authors, international collaborations, institutions, and temporal evolution of keyword frequencies. Landslide-related research has undergone notable growth during the past two decades. Multidisciplinary Geosciences, Geological Engineering, and Water Resources were the three major science categories, and Geomorphology was the most active journal during the surveyed period. The major author clusters and research regions are located in North America, Western Europe, and East Asia. The USA was a leading contributor to global landslide research, with the most independent and collaborative articles, and its dominance was also confirmed in the national/regional collaboration network. The Chinese Academy of Sciences, US Geological Survey, and Italian National Research Council were the three major contributing institutions. Guzzetti F from the Italian National Research Council was the most productive author, with the most high-quality articles. A keyword analysis found that landslide susceptibility assessment, rainfall- and earthquake-induced landslide stability, and effective research technologies and methods were consistent topics that attracted the most attention during the study period. Several keywords, such as “landslide susceptibility”, “earthquake”, “GIS”, “remote sensing”, and “logistic regression”, received dramatically increased attention during the study period, possibly signalling future research trends.