A literature review on accessibility using bibliometric analysis techniques

Abstract

Accessibility is a key concept in the field of transportation, and there is a rich amount of reviews available on this topic which concentrate on certain perspectives. However, none of them presents a comprehensive and quantitative overview on accessibility-related publications. To fill this gap, this study reviewed two decades of publications (during 2000-2019) drawn from Web of Science (WoS), and aims to figure out the evolution pathway of accessibility related studies so that future research directions can be recognized. By employing the bibliometric analysis techniques, this study provides the potential to trace historical and geographic trends at global level, covering leading journals and institutions, keywords characteristics, citation network analysis, and a qualitative review of the most influential papers. The output results show that there is an increasing geographic spread along with the growth spurt of research publications on the topic of accessibility especially since 2010s. Both the keywords’ characteristics and citation network analysis help to identify research hot points, categorized as new indicators development and accessibility-based applications. Finally, this paper highlights the need for further studies for those two hot points respectively. It is hoped the results output here could benefit researchers engaging in this field to sharpen their own future research directions, and provide practitioners with a greater understanding of the various types of accessibility metrics and help them to identify the most appropriate practice for their specific situation.

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ORCID for Simon Blainey: orcid.org/0000-0003-4249-8110

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