30 years of Energy for Sustainable Development: A bibliometric overview

Energy for Sustainable Development is a leading international journal in the fields of energy research and sustainable development, published on behalf of the International Energy Initiative. The journal was first published in 1994. In celebration of its 30th anniversary in 2024, this paper presents a comprehensive bibliometric overview of the most significant trends in the journal between 1994 and 2023. The objective of this study is to identify the journal's impact, the most productive and influential authors, institutions, countries/territories, leading topics, and to analyse their evolution over time. The work is primarily based on data from the Scopus database. In certain instances, the Web of Science Core Collection database is employed to improve the bibliographic analysis. Furthermore, we present a graphical mapping of the bibliographic material, employing the Visualisation of Similarities (VOS) viewer software to facilitate more in-depth analyses. The graphical visualisation utilises co-citation, bibliographic coupling, and co-occurrence of author keywords. The results highlight the substantial growth and impact of the journal throughout its entire lifetime. It is anticipated that the journal will continue to expand its international diversity and disseminate knowledge in energy research and sustainable development on a global scale. • A bibliometric overview of the first 30 years of Energy for Sustainable Development. • Identification of the most cited articles, and the most productive authors, institutions and countries. • Analysis of the most popular keywords and topics published in the journal. • Graphical visualisation by using the VOS viewer software.