Mapping the Literature on Academic Publishing: A Bibliometric Analysis on WOS

With the data from the Web of Science Core Collection-Citation database for the period (1970–2020), we conducted a dynamic visual systematic review of the literature on academic publishing with the help of bibliometric software, CiteSpace, and VOSviewer. The main purpose is to reveal the internal structures and hidden inferences, including the diversified discipline, top-ranked journals, most widely occurring topics, most cited and leading articles, highly productive and outstanding scholars, and most contributing institutions and countries. The co-citation, co-occurrence, cluster detection, and strong citation burstness were employed to show the intellectual base, evolutionary stages, and dynamics of transitions of academic publishing. The study defines the whole profile of international academic publishing, presenting its diachronic evolution, identifying research front, detecting emerging trends and abrupt changes. It expands the previous paradigm that ignored the large data corpus, aiming to provide certain reference value for future research of academic publishing.