Scientometrics of Scientometrics Based on Web of Science Core Collection Data between 1992 and 2020

Scientometrics is a quantitative and statistical approach that analyzes research on certain themes. It originated from information/library science but has been applied in various disciplines, including information science, library science, natural science, technology, engineering, medical sciences, and social sciences and humanities. Numerous scientometric studies have been carried out, but no study has attempted to investigate the overall research status of scientometrics. The objective of this study was to investigate the research status of scientometrics based on 16,225 publications archived in the Web of Science Core Collection between 1992 and 2020. The results show that there has been a marked increase in publications on scientometric studies over the past decades, with “Information Science Library Science” being the predominant discipline publishing scientometric studies, but scientometrics has been widely adopted in a variety of other disciplines (240 of 254 Web of Science categories). It was found that Web of Science, Vosviewer, and Scientometrics are the most utilized database, software, and journal for scientometric studies, respectively. The most productive author (Lutz Bornmann from the Max Planck Society, Germany), organization (University of Granada, Spain), and country (USA) are also identified. In addition, high-impact scientometric studies and the research landscape are analyzed through citation networks and the co-occurrence of keywords method.