A bibliometric and visual analysis of contaminant transport modeling in the groundwater system: current trends, hotspots, and future directions

Contaminant transport modeling (CTM) in the groundwater represents the complex bio-geo-chemical processes in the subsurface system and plays a vital role in designing remediation strategies for contaminated sites. Hence, this study evaluated 1955 articles on CTM-based studies published from 2010 to 2022 by utilizing the Scopus® database to provide a quantitative analysis of current trends and future directions. A systematic approach comprised of a bibliometric survey and visualization of various networks was conducted with the VOSviewer and Biblioshiny software for quantitative analysis of progress of CTM research field over the past decade. The hotspots and evolution of themes of CTM were found using Sankey diagrams, and thematic maps. It was observed that articles were published at an exponential rate over past 5 years. The analysis of Scopus® database revealed that the average citations per article and the average citations per year per article were 14.7 and 2.225. In the past decade, USA published 489 articles and emerged as the leading country based on mutual collaborations and cooperation with other top 9 most productive countries. Flinders University was ranked in the first position based on the number of articles, followed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The findings obtained from this study can help researchers identify exploitation and core areas, to understand better the direction of research of mathematical model development, and to determine hotspots of CTM research field.