Structure and temporal evolution of transportation literature

Abstract: Fifty years of evolution of the transportation field is revisited at a macro scale using scientometric analysis of all publications in all 39 journals indexed in the category of Transportation by the Web of Science. The size of the literature is estimated to have reached 50,000 documents. At the highest level of aggregation, four major divisions of the literature are differentiated through these analyses, namely (i) network analysis and traffic flow, (ii) economics of transportation and logistics, (iii) travel behaviour, and (iv) road safety. Influential and emerging authors of each division are identified. Temporal trends in transportation research are also investigated via document co-citation analysis. This analysis identifies various major streams of transportation research while determining their approximate time of emergence and duration of activity. It documents topics that have been most trendy at any period of time during the last fifty years. Three clusters associated with the travel behaviour division (collectively embodying topics of land-use, active transportation, residential self-selection, traveller experience/satisfaction, social exclusion and transport/spatial equity), one cluster of statistical modelling of road accidents, and a cluster of network modelling linked predominantly to the notion of macroscopic fundamental diagram demonstrate characteristics of being current hot topics of the field. Three smaller clusters linked predominantly to electric mobility and autonomous/automated vehicles show characteristics of being emerging hot topics. A cluster labelled shared mobility is the youngest emerging cluster. Influential articles within each cluster of references are identified. Additional outcomes are the determination the influential outsiders of the transportation field.