Global trends in karst-related studies from 1990 to 2016: A bibliometric analysis

To bibliometrically analyze karst-related studies from 1990 to 2016. We collected data, and our findings revealed that the number of documents, authors, research institutes, participant countries, and English references dominant increased for karst-related studies. While geology, water resources, and ecology were leading categories of karst-related studies, environmental earth science karst-related papers were the highest. To quantitatively and qualitatively examine karst-related research documents, we used spatiotemporal, international collaboration, yields, and GDP characteristics to determine global trends in karst-related studies. This study provides quantitatively and qualitatively examine karst-related research documents to determine global trends in karst-related studies and the direction of future studies.