Global mapping of seawater desalination research: A bibliometric analysis of research trends from 1980–2022

This study conducted a bibliometric analysis based on the Web of Science publications to provide insights into research activities and tendencies on seawater desalination from 1980 to 2022. A total of 7108 publications were retrieved and analyzed using Microsoft Excel, Vosviewer, Biblioshiny, and Biexcel software. The results indicated that the annual outputs of the related scientific articles increased following an exponential pattern with a rate constant of 0.145/year. Desalination, Desalination, and Water Treatment, Journal of Membrane Science and Water Research were the top four journals for publication. Among the countries, China took the leading rank with 1879 publications, followed by the USA, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia with 1014, 527, and 482 publications, respectively. The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Egyptian Knowledge Bank, King Abdullah University of Science Technology were the top three most productive organizations with 199, 194, and 174 publications, respectively. Wang Y from the Dalian University of Technology, China, was the most prolific author with 122 publications. The analysis reveals that China and the USA collaborated the maximum times for seawater desalination research with 122 publications. In keywords, the top three keywords were seawater desalination, desalination, and performance, with occurrences of 2919, 2124, and 1089 times respectively. The highest citations were associated with two articles published in Science and Water Research journals, with citations of 3931 and 2033, respectively. The analysis revealed that most of the research activities were associated with desalination technologies, including membrane desalination and reverse/forward osmosis.