Research trends and areas of focus on the Chinese Loess Plateau: A bibliometric analysis during 1991–2018

•A bibliometric analysis of Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) studies was explored.•CLP research outputs increased exponentially during 1991–2018.•Keyword analysis indicated climate-related topics were the most popular study areas.•Research interests shifted from agriculture to ecology.•Government policies influence the choice of research hotspots. To understand the research trends and areas of focus on the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP), a bibliometric study based on the Science Citation Index-Expanded (SCI-E) was performed. This study presented a comprehensive overview of the field based on the annual outputs, research areas, temporal trends in keywords, marked journals, institutions, and authors. In the SCI-E database, only 17 outputs occurred before 1991. Thus, we chose the study period between 1991 and 2018. The results revealed that the annual number of publications increased, with an especially rapid increase after 2006. Geology, environmental sciences and ecology, agriculture, water resources, and physical geography were the most popular Web of Science research areas. A keyword analysis indicated that “climate” was the most popular study area. After 2006, the research areas changed to “impact”, “dynamics”, and “land use change” topics in mechanisms and regulation. Since 2011, coupled effects among the environmental factors have been incorporated in research on the CLP. The areas of focus range from classical geology to agriculture research, ecological construction research, and research on the efficient use of resources. Catena and Palaeogeography Palaeoclimatology Palaeoecology were the most popular journals for researchers to publish their research results, and these two journals also had greater influence in the field with larger numbers of citations than other journals. The institution with the greatest research output and most citations was the Chinese Academy of Sciences. An Z. S., Fu B. J., Liu T. S., Ding Z. L., Shao M. A., and Lu H. Y. were the most competitive authors based on their large numbers of papers and citations. This paper presents an attempt to better understand the progress in research on the CLP.