Bibliometric Analysis of Scientific Publications on Blockchain Research and Applications

Abstract: Since the introduction of Bitcoin in 2008, blockchain technology has garnered widespread attention. Scholars from various research fields, countries, and institutions have published a significant number of papers on this subject. However, there is currently a lack of comprehensive analysis specifically focusing on the scientific publications in the field of blockchain. To conduct a comprehensive analysis, we compiled a corpus of 41,497 publications in blockchain research from 2008 to 2023 using the Clarivate databases. Through bibliometric and citation analyses, we gained valuable insights into the field. Our study offers an overview of the blockchain research landscape, including country, institution, authorship, and subject categories. Additionally, we identified Emerging Research Areas (ERA) using the co-citation clustering approach, examining factors such as recency, growth, and contributions from different countries/regions. Furthermore, we identified influential publications based on citation velocity and analyzed five representative Research Fronts in detail. This analysis provides a fine-grained examination of specific areas within blockchain research. Our findings contribute to understanding evolving trends, emerging applications, and potential directions for future research in the multidisciplinary field of blockchain.