Oil Spills- Where We Were, Where We Are, And Where We Will Be? A Bibliometric and Content Analysis Discourse

Abstract

More frequently and in more ways than one might think, oil spills are a very common phenomenon. There were three major (>700 tonnes; Asia and Africa) and four minor oil spills only in 2022 (between 7 and 700 tonnes; North America, Asia, and Africa). Oil spills have been known to cause numerous negative ecological, societal, economic, and public health impacts. Not only this but oil spills require rapid response to contain and mitigate multidimensional damages caused. A SCOPUS search of the keyword ‘Oil Spills’ in ‘’Article title, Abstracts, and Keywords’ and ‘Article title’ results in 30529 and 9851 (as of March 4th, 2023) documents (Journal articles, Conference proceedings, Books, Book series, Trade journals, and Reports). In the year 2023 alone, the SCOPUS database had 297 documents at the time of writing. Such a massive database requires a retrospection of underlying and emerging themes for readers to understand the extant literature and to uncover future research agendas. This study is an attempt to conduct a bibliometric analysis of select ‘Oil spill’ publications. This investigation will involve performance analysis (performance of research constituents such as publication and citation evolution, leading authors, publications, affiliations, sources, and countries) and science mapping (relationship between research constituents by analyzing conceptual, intellectual, and social structures). VOSviewer and Biblioshiny The study will conclude future research trends by the content analysis of the fifteen most recent and cited documents.