Statistical Tools Application for Literature Review: A Case on Maintenance Management Decision-Making in the Steel Industry

Literature review plays a crucial role in research. This paper explores bibliometrics, which utilize statistical tools to evaluate the researcher’s scientific contributions. Its intent is to map frequently cited articles and authors, identify top sources, track publication years, explore keywords and their co-occurrences, and show article distribution by thematic area and country. Additionally, it provides a thematic map of relevance and progress, with special attention to interdisciplinary work. Finally, it also makes use of research findings in maintenance management decision-making, where the findings reveal that the literature provides valuable insights into the impact of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. Despite advancements in maintenance management, gaps persist in comprehensively addressing core themes, evolutionary trends, and future research directions. This research aims to bridge this gap by providing a detailed examination of the application of bibliometric analysis employing statistical tools to measure researchers’ scientific contributions, concerning the AHP method applications in maintenance management within the steel industry. The study confirmed that tools like VOSviewer and the Bibliometrix package in R can extract relevant information regarding bibliometric laws, helping us understand research patterns. These findings support strategic decision-making and the evaluation of scientific policies for researchers and institutions.