“Environmental design and health”: A bibliometric analysis

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of the scientific production in the field of environmental design, focusing on the relation of this research field with human health. Data was retrieved from Scopus database using two groups of keywords: “environmental design” and “environmental design and health.” Publications were analyzed according to several parameters: year of publication, country, scientific field, institution, source title, source type, access type and funding. The results indicate an important increase in research activity, especially after 2010. The United States of America and China emerged as the most productive countries, in agreement with the location of the most productive institutions which are mostly based in the USA. The dominant scientific field for the first group of keywords is engineering and several source titles that focus on topics related to sustainable building constructions host the published works; however, when the term “health” is included in the group of keywords searched, medicine emerges as the scientific field with the most publications and Health Environments Research and Design Journal as the leading source title. Finally, the analysis reveals an increasing trend of open access publications. Overall, the findings indicate an increased scientific interest in the field, especially when correlated to health.