Unveiling Microbiologically Influenced Corrosion (MIC) Research Trends: A Bibliometric Analysis Approach

Bibliometric analysis is a popular and rigorous statistical method for exploring and analyzing vast volumes of bibliographic data. This method helps us to unpack the evolution of a specific scientific field over time while showing the trends in topics and collaboration networks among scientific actors in the area. However, the application of such rigorous analysis in the domain of Microbiologically Influenced Corrosion (MIC) is new and relatively underdeveloped. The objective of this work is to provide an overview of the bibliometric analysis procedure, with a particular focus on its various
methods (including co-word, co-authorship, co-citation, bibliographic coupling, and network analysis), in the form of general guidelines on when and how it should be carried out. The bibliographic data extraction was performed with a Boolean query search in Scopus and Web of Science core collections. The downloaded data was merged in R studio and analyzed using the Bibliometrix package and Biblioshiny interface. Other available software packages for bibliometric analysis such as Gephi and VOSviewer were also consulted. Briefly, we believe that this research will be a useful source for demonstrating the methods and procedures for performing bibliometric studies on MIC; exemplified with a case study on oil and gas systems. The other objective of this work is to help scholars and practitioners to gain deeper knowledge of the bibliometric methodology procedure for MIC research; give them a general overview of the field; demonstrate knowledge gaps in the literature; pinpoint new directions for research and where they can publish their work; as well as collaboration networks among the authors, institutions and countries on the field.

Keywords: performance analysis, science mapping, co-word analysis, network
analysis, bibliometric coupling, oil and gas

Acknowledgments
This article/publication is based upon work from COST Action “CA20130 Euro-MIC” (https://www.euro-mic.org), supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding agency for research and innovation networks. Our Actions help connect research initiatives across Europe and enable scientists to grow their ideas by sharing them with their peers. This boosts their research, career, and innovation.