45 Years of Publications in Energy Economics: Evolution and Thematic Trends

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of 45 years of publications in Energy Economics, highlighting publication trends, thematic evolution, and future research directions based on data from 6,563 documents.

Contribution

It offers a detailed retrospective of the journal's thematic development and identifies future trends using bibliometric and co-occurrence analysis methods.

Findings

Publication rate increased by 1.02% annually.

US and China lead in publication volume.

Thematic trends have evolved significantly over 45 years.

Abstract

The journal Energy Economics, a leading international peer-reviewed outlet for economic theory in the energy sector, celebrates its 45th anniversary in 2024. This article uses a bibliometric approach to present a retrospective of the journal's contributions. The study includes all publications from the journal based on data from the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The resulting sample comprises 6,563 documents covering the period from 1979 to April 2024. The annual publication rate increased by 1.02 percent, with an average of 40.07 citations per document. Institutions from the United States of America and China lead in the number of articles published in the journal. A co-occurrence analysis of keywords was conducted, complemented by a sub-sample analysis, to provide a detailed view of thematic development and evolution over time. Finally, the article highlights future thematic trends of the journal, offering insights for editorial guidelines and interested authors.