Bibliometric analysis of fracking scientific literature

Abstract This study uses bibliometric methods to analyze the scientific literature of fracking. Web of Science database, including the Science Citation Index, Sciences Citation Index and Conference Proceedings Citation Index—Science were used to collect the data. The analysis done in the paper looks at the annual distribution of publications, countries, institutes, authors, journals and categories. Furthermore, key topics and highly-cited papers were analyzed. The results show that fracking as a new research term appears in the Web of Science records from 1953 and its presence in the Web of Science has been growing ever since, becoming a hot topic recently. The countries with most of the contributions have been USA, China and Canada, whereas the Russian Academy of Sciences, University of Oklahoma and Tohoku University were the three institutions with most publications in fracking research. The publications have been concentrated in several journals, led by the Journal of Petroleum Technology, Heфmянoe Xoзяйcmвo and International Journal of Rock Mechanics and Mining Sciences, and categorized mainly in geosciences multidisciplinary, Engineering Petroleum and Energy Fuels. The study has identified that terms of fracking can be divided into three main clusters, related to “drilling methods”, “exploitation/extraction process” and the “geoscience aspects”. The highly cited papers in the period 1953–2013 were collected and analyzed, in order to show the papers with highest impact in fracking area.

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