A Visualized Review of Ecological Planning and Design based on Bibliometrics from 1992 to 2017

Abstract

To rapidly and clearly define the knowledge structure, research focus, and research trends in the field of ecological planning and design, the bibliometric method was combined with visualization tools to conduct a classified statistical study of 712 articles on ecological planning and design in the core database of Web of Science (WoS) from 1992 to 2017, making a contrastive analysis of information like the author, journal, research institution, country, keywords of those articles from three perspectives, namely co-authorship analysis, co-citation analysis, and co-words analysis. Three conclusions were drawn. First, academic exchanges and cooperation in the field of ecological planning and design should be strengthened between countries and scientific research institutions, especially China and its research institutions should actively participate in such exchanges and cooperation, and scholars are expected to seize the opportunities to cooperate with each other in research and practice in this field. Second, as developed European and American countries outweigh Asian countries in terms of research results and overall influence in the field of ecological planning and design, the popularity and influence of journals from Asian countries need to be improved, particularly as they study and report on ecosystem services. Third, as research on ecological planning and design become increasingly systematic, comprehensive, and humanistic, resilience has become a research hotspot in this field in recent years, thus enough attention should be paid to this aspect. Finally, the author hopes that the combination of visualization tools and the bibliometric method can foster enlightenment and research ideas among researchers and practitioners in this field.