Dark energy: A scientometric mapping of publications

Abstract

This paper attempts to highlight the growth and development of dark energy literature and make the quantitative and qualitative assessment by way of analyzing various features of research output based on Web of Science database. A total of 5858 publications were published on dark energy, which received 157,581 citations during 1999-2011. The average number of publications per year was 450.62, and the average number of citations per publication was 26.90. The publications peaked in 2011 with 934 publications, and the highest number of citations (26,404) were received in 2003. There were 3857 (65.84%) single country publications from 74 countries and 2001 (34.16%) multi-country collaborative publications. The highest number of publications were from Europe with 3723 (41.15%) publications and 126,747 (39.88%) citations followed by Asia with 2614 (28.89%) publications and 63,267 (19.90%) citations, and North America with 1980 (21.89%) publications and 105,132 (33.08%) citations. European scientists have been playing an important role on dark energy-related research followed by Asian Scientists. The exponential growth of publications was observed during the period. USA had the highest share (26.84%) of publications followed Peoples Republic of China with 13.74% publications, England with 11.71% publications, Italy with 10.84% publications, Spain with 7.90% publications, Germany with 7.27% publications, and India with 7.07% publications. Astronomy and Astrophysics accounts for the largest share 3920 (66.92%) of publications in the total worldwide output on dark energy which received 117,919 (74.83%) citations followed by Multidisciplinary Physics with 1242 (21.20%) publications, 29,775 (18.90%) citations and 23.97 average citations per publication. More than 80% of the publications appeared only in 15 key-journals.