The Hot Spots and Frontiers of Research on Canal Transportation – A Bibliometric Analysis in CiteSpace

As artificial waterway transportation systems, canals played a crucial role in the initial stages of the Industrial Revolution, facilitating faster, more convenient and economically viable mass transportation of goods, thus becoming indispensable components in certain regions’ urbanisation and industrialisation processes. This study employs the bibliometric analysis tool CiteSpace to investigate 212 papers on canal transportation from the Web of Science over the past three decades. The objective of this research is to elucidate the knowledge structure through visual representations of collaboration networks, co-citation networks, keyword co-occurrence and clustering patterns. In the findings, we establish author, institution and country co-authorship networks to ascertain the distribution of core journals by determining journal co-citation networks. The literature co-citation network reveals the main research themes and knowledge structure of canal transportation. Influential authors are identified through author co-citation networks, while research hotspots and frontiers are discovered through keyword co-occurrence networks. This study offers a comprehensive and informative perspective on current trends and research developments in canal transportation. Additionally, we propose future research directions with potential prospects to propel the advancement of this field further comprehensively.