A bibliometric analysis and visualization of blockchain

Abstract Blockchain has received global concern as a research focus in recent years. It is a decentralized and unreliably distributed database technology. Numerous countries and researchers have successively applied blockchain in various fields. CiteSpace and VOSviewer were adopted as bibliometric analysis tools in this paper to obtain a comprehensive overview of blockchain technology and grasp the current research emphasis. The Web of Science core collection database was used as the primary source for data collection. The data were collected from 3826 articles published from 2013 to 2020. Specifically, the publication trends and categories might throw light on the development trends and current domains in terms of blockchain research. The most influential and productive authors, institutions, countries, and journals were involved in this bibliometric analysis. Theoretical knowledge and hot research topics on blockchain mainly ranged over “smart contract”, “bitcoin”, “security”, “ethereum”, and “cryptography”. A cluster analysis from the keyword perspective was carried out to obtain emerging trends and frontiers of blockchain. The results showed that future research should concentrate on management, blockchain technology, energy, machine learning, and smart home. Therefore, this paper assisted scholars and practitioners in getting a comprehensive understanding of the status quo and trends of blockchain research.

[1]  Praveen Gauravaram,et al.  LSB: A Lightweight Scalable BlockChain for IoT Security and Privacy , 2017, ArXiv.

[2]  Ali Hamidi,et al.  Evaluation and scientometric analysis of researches on air pollution in developing countries from 1952 to 2018 , 2020, Air Quality, Atmosphere & Health.

[3]  Dale K. Pace,et al.  The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet , 1998 .

[4]  Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo,et al.  Blockchain: A Panacea for Healthcare Cloud-Based Data Security and Privacy? , 2018, IEEE Cloud Computing.

[5]  Marc Pilkington,et al.  Blockchain Technology: Principles and Applications , 2015 .

[6]  K. Levy.  Book-Smart, Not Street-Smart: Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts and The Social Workings of Law , 2017 .

[7]  Beng Chin Ooi,et al.  BLOCKBENCH: A Framework for Analyzing Private Blockchains , 2017, SIGMOD Conference.

[8]  Subhasis Thakur,et al.  Co-simulation of electricity distribution networks and peer to peer energy trading platforms , 2020 .

[9]  Xiaojiang Du,et al.  Machine learning based privacy-preserving fair data trading in big data market , 2019, Inf. Sci..

[10]  Jian Shen,et al.  An ID-Based Linearly Homomorphic Signature Scheme and Its Application in Blockchain , 2018, IEEE Access.

[11]  Chen Yu,et al.  The methodology function of Cite Space mapping knowledge domains , 2015 .

[12]  Marcel Antal,et al.  Blockchain Based Decentralized Management of Demand Response Programs in Smart Energy Grids , 2018, Sensors.

[13]  Chaomei Chen,et al.  CiteSpace II: Detecting and visualizing emerging trends and transient patterns in scientific literature , 2006, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[14]  Fei-Yue Wang,et al.  Towards blockchain-based intelligent transportation systems , 2016, 2016 IEEE 19th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC).

[15]  Boqiang Lin,et al.  Mapping the oil price-stock market nexus researches: A scientometric review , 2020 .

[16]  Hyeonseung Im,et al.  A Comparative Study of Bitcoin Price Prediction Using Deep Learning , 2019, Mathematics.

[17]  Khaled Salah,et al.  IoT security: Review, blockchain solutions, and open challenges , 2017, Future Gener. Comput. Syst..

[18]  Michael Devetsikiotis,et al.  Blockchains and Smart Contracts for the Internet of Things , 2016, IEEE Access.

[19]  Ashiq Anjum,et al.  Blockchain Standards for Compliance and Trust , 2017, IEEE Cloud Computing.

[20]  Shao Qi-feng,et al.  Blockchain : Architecture and Research Progress , 2017 .

[21]  Lie Yang,et al.  Global trends of solid waste research from 1997 to 2011 by using bibliometric analysis , 2012, Scientometrics.

[22]  Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo,et al.  SDTE: A Secure Blockchain-Based Data Trading Ecosystem , 2020, IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security.

[23]  Alfred Menezes,et al.  Handbook of Applied Cryptography , 2018 .

[24]  Rajesh Gupta,et al.  Blockchain and AI amalgamation for energy cloud management: Challenges, solutions, and future directions , 2020, J. Parallel Distributed Comput..

[25]  Pieter Wuille,et al.  Enabling Blockchain Innovations with Pegged Sidechains , 2014 .

[26]  Kevin W. Boyack,et al.  Mapping the backbone of science , 2004, Scientometrics.

[27]  Li-Chun Wang,et al.  Stochastic Blockchain for IoT Data Integrity , 2020, IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering.

[28]  Tommaso Melodia,et al.  Securing the Internet of Things in the Age of Machine Learning and Software-Defined Networking , 2018, IEEE Internet of Things Journal.

[29]  Markus Kraft,et al.  Blockchain technology in the chemical industry: Machine-to-machine electricity market , 2017 .

[30]  Ludo Waltman,et al.  Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for bibliometric mapping , 2009, Scientometrics.

[31]  Haibo Yi,et al.  Securing instant messaging based on blockchain with machine learning , 2019 .

[32]  Nor Badrul Anuar,et al.  The rise of “blockchain”: bibliometric analysis of blockchain study , 2019, Scientometrics.

[33]  Shuai Wang,et al.  Blockchain-Enabled Smart Contracts: Architecture, Applications, and Future Trends , 2019, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems.

[34]  Yogesh Kumar Dwivedi,et al.  Blockchain research, practice and policy: Applications, benefits, limitations, emerging research themes and research agenda , 2019, Int. J. Inf. Manag..

[35]  Jong-Hyouk Lee,et al.  Ethereum smart contract-based automated power trading algorithm in a microgrid environment , 2018, The Journal of Supercomputing.

[36]  Steve Omohundro,et al.  Cryptocurrencies, smart contracts, and artificial intelligence , 2014, SIGAI.

[37]  S A R A H M E I K L E J O H N,et al.  A Fistful of Bitcoins Characterizing Payments Among Men with No Names , 2013 .

[38]  Jiaqi Yan,et al.  Overview of business innovations and research opportunities in blockchain and introduction to the special issue , 2016, Financial Innovation.

[39]  Shahaboddin Shamshirband,et al.  State of the Art of Machine Learning Models in Energy Systems, a Systematic Review , 2019, Energies.

[40]  Li Huang,et al.  Climate change and carbon sink: a bibliometric analysis , 2020, Environmental Science and Pollution Research.

[41]  D. Kahn.  The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet , 1967 .

[42]  Kai Fan,et al.  MedBlock: Efficient and Secure Medical Data Sharing Via Blockchain , 2018, Journal of Medical Systems.

[43]  Xiaojiang Du,et al.  Consortium Blockchain-Based Malware Detection in Mobile Devices , 2018, IEEE Access.

[44]  Mohamed Elhoseny,et al.  A secure data routing schema for WSN using Elliptic Curve Cryptography and homomorphic encryption , 2016, J. King Saud Univ. Comput. Inf. Sci..

[45]  Richard A. Frost,et al.  A Survey of Applications of Identity-Based Cryptography in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks , 2012, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[46]  Christof Weinhardt,et al.  Designing microgrid energy markets , 2018 .

[47]  Björn Scheuermann,et al.  Bitcoin and Beyond: A Technical Survey on Decentralized Digital Currencies , 2016, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials.

[48]  Hangbae Chang,et al.  A Sustainable Home Energy Prosumer-Chain Methodology with Energy Tags over the Blockchain , 2018 .

[49]  Muhammad Wasif Nisar,et al.  Blockchain and Internet of Things: A bibliometric study , 2020, Comput. Electr. Eng..

[50]  Yan Zhang,et al.  Enabling Localized Peer-to-Peer Electricity Trading Among Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles Using Consortium Blockchains , 2017, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.

[51]  Nenghai Yu,et al.  A Privacy-Preserving Remote Data Integrity Checking Protocol with Data Dynamics and Public Verifiability , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.

[52]  Morgan P. McBee,et al.  Blockchain Technology: Principles and Applications in Medical Imaging , 2020, Journal of Digital Imaging.

[53]  Sarah Underwood,et al.  Blockchain beyond bitcoin , 2016, Commun. ACM.

[54]  Eric Campo,et al.  A review of smart homes - Present state and future challenges , 2008, Comput. Methods Programs Biomed..

[55]  Neeraj Kumar,et al.  SURVIVOR: A blockchain based edge-as-a-service framework for secure energy trading in SDN-enabled vehicle-to-grid environment , 2019, Comput. Networks.

[56]  Wei-Chiang Hong,et al.  Machine Learning Adoption in Blockchain-Based Smart Applications: The Challenges, and a Way Forward , 2020, IEEE Access.

[57]  Zekeriya Erkin,et al.  VAPOR: a Value-Centric Blockchain that is Scale-out, Decentralized, and Flexible by Design , 2018, Financial Cryptography.

[58]  Eva Micheler,et al.  Regulatory Technology: Replacing Law with Computer Code , 2019, European Business Organization Law Review.

[59]  Koen Ponnet,et al.  Bibliometric analysis of safety culture research , 2017, Safety Science.

[60]  Sunny King,et al.  PPCoin: Peer-to-Peer Crypto-Currency with Proof-of-Stake , 2012 .

[61]  Mehdi Sookhak,et al.  The Evolution of Blockchain: A Bibliometric Study , 2019, IEEE Access.

[62]  Daniel Davis Wood,et al.  ETHEREUM: A SECURE DECENTRALISED GENERALISED TRANSACTION LEDGER , 2014 .

[63]  Jiawei Zhang,et al.  Blockchain Based Data Integrity Verification for Large-Scale IoT Data , 2019, IEEE Access.

[64]  Ming Tao,et al.  A Hypergraph-Based Blockchain Model and Application in Internet of Things-Enabled Smart Homes , 2018, Sensors.

[65]  Ahmed Serhrouchni,et al.  Bubbles of Trust: A decentralized blockchain-based authentication system for IoT , 2018, Comput. Secur..

[66]  Victor C. M. Leung,et al.  Computation Offloading and Content Caching in Wireless Blockchain Networks With Mobile Edge Computing , 2018, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

[67]  Gang Chen,et al.  Untangling Blockchain: A Data Processing View of Blockchain Systems , 2017, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.

[68]  Li Da Xu,et al.  Industry 4.0: state of the art and future trends , 2018, Int. J. Prod. Res..

[69]  Claudio Lima.  Developing Open and Interoperable DLT\/Blockchain Standards [Standards] , 2018, Computer.

[70]  Anas Abou El Kalam,et al.  FairAccess: a new Blockchain-based access control framework for the Internet of Things , 2016, Secur. Commun. Networks.

[71]  Anita Gehlot,et al.  Adoption of blockchain technology in various realms: Opportunities and challenges , 2020, Secur. Priv..

[72]  Zhu Han,et al.  When Mobile Blockchain Meets Edge Computing , 2017, IEEE Communications Magazine.

[73]  Rajesh Gupta,et al.  Blockchain envisioned UAV networks: Challenges, solutions, and comparisons , 2020, Comput. Commun..