Worldwide trends in the scientific production on rural depopulation, a bibliometric analysis using bibliometrix R-tool

Abstract

Abstract The scientific production on rural depopulation has grown in recent years. However, a global picture of the research carried out on this topic does not exist. The aim of this study is to identify the worldwide trends in rural depopulation scientific production over time in the main levels of analysis: sources, authors and documents. A bibliometric analysis was developed to analyse a final sample of 1150 articles published between 1979 and 2018. In order to develop the analysis, bibliometrix R-Tool was used and the metadata of two databases (WoS and Scopus) was retrieved and merged. Results show two major areas of co-citation networks; a poor network of collaboration between countries with some highlighted interaction; an author collaboration network with close groups of knowledge and two main themes resulting from a co-word analysis. The main conclusion is that rural depopulation is not yet a solid field of research and the most important themes identified are related to specific geographical areas. However, international collaborations are growing, new trends appearing, and other related fields are expressing greater interest in rural depopulation, which could indicate the preceding stage to an eventual consolidation of the theme. This finding can assist future research in this or related fields by providing a worldwide overview of rural depopulation research over time.