Analyzing the Evolution of Topics and Determination of Research Directions in the Field of Territorial Development

The aim of the article is to analyze trends and determine directions of research in the field of territorial development through conducting structural-trend and bibliometric analysis of scientific publications. To achieve this aim, the authors analyzed the structure of publications using tools from the Scopus and Web of Science databases, as well as examined the strength of links between keywords for clustering topics using the VOSviewer toolkit. A methodological approach to conducting structural-trend and bibliometric analysis of publications related to territorial development issues is presented. The upward trend in the number of publications in both databases indicates a growing interest in creating and publishing studies related to territorial development. A general research profile on the production of scientific articles in the field of territorial development studies is provided, which contains a comparison of database metadata. The most commonly used terms found in literature on territorial development are: governance, community, sustainable development, territory, territorial development, decentralization. Using the VOSviewer software, the keywords were grouped into 7 clusters. The frequency of using keywords allows for the identification of thematic directions in research within a particular area. Within the study, the terms are grouped according to their semantic similarity, which made it possible to identify the determinants of research in the field of territorial development. To characterize the areas of scientific research in each cluster, the most used keywords were identified as follows: territorial development, governance, community, territories, sustainable development, regional development, global development. Scientific research on the development of territories was most actively published in the years 2017–2021. In 2017–2018, research focused on the formation of territorial development policy, State regulation, and defining the directions of territorial development; however, in recent years, issues of extractivism, resource use, local self-governance, rural development, urbanization, and political ecology have begun to be actively studied.