Mapping the Landscape of Smart City Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

This bibliometric analysis examines smart city research literature published in English between 2019 and 2023. The aim was to map the scholarly landscape and delineate key patterns and trends. Approximately 2500 journal articles and conference papers focusing on smart cities were retrieved from the Dimensions database using keyword searches. Co-authorship, co-occurrence, citation, and geographic mapping were performed using VOSviewer to uncover structures and relationships within the literature. Text mining facilitates keyword extraction for thematic interpretation. The analysis revealed prolific contributors, influential publications, salient topics, collaboration networks, and geographic productivity trends. The limitations center on scope constraints regarding publication types, languages, timeframes, and analytical techniques. Future directions include expanding the breadth of the dataset, incorporating additional sources, applying mixed methods, conducting longitudinal assessments, and comparing findings against related fields. Notwithstanding the scope limitations, this study provides productive insights into the state of contemporary smart city research. Multifaceted bibliometric analysis techniques have elucidated prominent authors, highly cited works, topics, collaborative networks, and geographic trends. The key findings synthesize a complex domain that provides signposts for scholars and policymakers. Addressing these limitations can further enrich our understanding. Overall, this research constitutes an informative foundation for navigating the evolving structure of smart city knowledge. Further studies expanding the analytical and corpus scope may reveal deeper insights into smart city scholarship across disciplines and global regions.