Exploring acceptable risk in engineering and operations research and management science by bibliometric analysis

As the decision‐making basis for “safety” in risk management and risk assessment activities, acceptable risk has always been an important topic of risk‐related research. Based on the records in the Science Citation Index Expanded database and Social Sciences Citation Index database via the Web of Science Core Collection, 1124 articles or reviews related to acceptable risk in engineering and operations research and management science were retrieved. These documents, published between 1961 and 2021, covered 3056 authors, 75 countries/territories, 1296 institutions, and 323 journals. In this study, bibliometric data such as annual growth trends were analyzed by using descriptive statistics. Through the co‐occurrence maps created by CiteSpace and Gephi, the most productive and influential countries/territories, institutions, and authors as well as their cooperation networks were identified. Further analysis was conducted to determine the core publications and publication sources in this field through co‐citation analysis. Insights into focus areas and research topics over time were obtained through keyword co‐occurrence analysis. This study provides a macroscopic overview of acceptable risk research and may help researchers better understand this research field and predict its dynamic directions.