Trends in global research on sanitation: a 30-year perspective from 1990 to 2019

Abstract

In the past three decades, the field of sanitation has attracted much academic attention, and a large volume of relevant research results have emerged. To explore the characteristics and trends of global sanitation research literature, this paper presents a bibliometric analysis of 9559 articles published between 1990–2019 and extracted from the Web of Science Core Collection database. With the rapid increase in the number of related publications, both the breadth and depth of sanitation studies have increased significantly in the 21st century. In terms of multiple criteria, the comprehensive research strength of developed countries is greater than that of developing countries. The field is highly interdisciplinary, meaning that collaborations between research institutions are increasing. Keyword clustering analysis shows that the main research topics in the domain of sanitation are: (i) drinking water, (ii) sustainability, (iii) biofilm, (iv) epidemiology, and (v) WaSH (water, sanitation and hygiene). Meanwhile, keyword burst analysis showed that the new research hotspots and frontiers mainly concentrated on: (i) sustainable development of sanitation services adapting to climate change, (ii) main determinants affecting child malnutrition, (iii) research based on global and multi-national data, and (iv) evaluations on various aspects of performance. This paper provides a better understanding of sanitation research trends that have emerged over the past 30 years and can serve as a reference for future research.