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Rock glaciers are important ice-debris landforms in high-mountain permafrost environments, but the development, knowledge base, and emerging directions of this research field remain insufficiently synthesized. This study retrieved English-language article and article/data paper records from the Science Citation Index Expanded database of the Web of Science Core Collection using the query TS = (“rock glacier*” OR “rock glacier*”). After document-type filtering and manual screening, 1125 valid records published between 1910 and 2025 were analyzed. Descriptive bibliometrics were used to characterize scientific production and collaboration patterns, Reference Publication Year Spectroscopy (RPYS) was used to identify historically influential publication years and foundational references, and keyword co-occurrence networks, thematic mapping, and thematic evolution analysis were used to trace associations among research topics. A Logistic life-cycle model was used only as a diagnostic tool for the current publication stage, not as a deterministic forecast. The results indicate that global rock glacier research remains in an active growth stage, although model-derived saturation values should be interpreted cautiously because bibliometric trajectories are affected by database coverage, indexing practices, research funding, technological change, and policy demand. RPYS shows that the knowledge base evolved from geomorphological description, classification, and genetic debate toward permafrost creep, internal structure, thermo-mechanical response, and hydrological significance. Keyword and thematic analyses show increasing attention to climate change, mountain permafrost, InSAR, ground-penetrating radar, hydrological processes, and multi-source monitoring. Because the dataset is restricted to English-language SCI-Expanded records, the results should be interpreted as a map of indexed international literature rather than a complete inventory of all rock glacier knowledge.
Du et al. (Tue,) studied this question.