Resources are essential for human survival and development, and resource security occupies an important position in national security. With the increasing resource shortage problem, ecological stability is facing severe challenges. All countries are actively seeking new sustainable development ways to deal with various issues and shocks caused by the shortage of resources. This study aims to systematically and comprehensively evaluate the knowledge structure, research hotspots, and resource security evolution trends. Based on the number of 6391 articles retrieved from the Web of Science database from 1990 to 2021, this article carried out a visual analysis of global resource security research from the perspectives of scientific output characteristics, keywords, and highly cited literature scientific collaboration networks and hotspot emergence analysis. The research results show that after humans have experienced new public safety incidents, their understanding of resource security and sustainable development has risen to a new height. The number of relevant documents is increasing rapidly. At present, the research on resource security is still dominated by developed countries in Europe and America. This study finds that “food supply chain,” “water availability,” and “soil resources suitability” are the frontiers and hotspots in the field of resource security. Besides, “biodiversity,” “mineral resource security,” “medical and health resources” are important topics and directions of current research. This study provides a theoretical basis for scholars to explore the future research direction and practice of resource security, to achieve ecological stability and sustainable development.
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Resources are essential for measuring a country’s comprehensive strength and the cornerstone of national economic development. With the accelerating process of economic globalization, natural resources are crucial. Various countries have launched fierce competition around the exploration, exploitation, and supply of resources. This indirectly brings a huge challenge to ecological stability. The issue of resource security has become an essential strategic plan for all countries in the world (Peng et al. 2004). Also, the problem of resources security, ecological stability, and sustainable development has become increasingly severe, especially in recent years. The crisis threatening global environmental resilience and human health continues to intensify, such as global temperature rise, sea-level rise, Fukushima earthquake in Japan and the nuclear leakage in 2011, Japanese nuclear wastewater discharge, COVID-19 in 2020, and desertification in Darfur, leading to thoughts and worries about cooperation between countries around the world (Zheng 2017). Resource security and ecological stability are conducive to promoting sustainable urban development and accelerating low-carbon development goals. In this context, global scholars will pay more attention to resource security. To deeply understand global resource security research status, it is vital to comprehensively review and summarize the current research achievements in global resource security.
Different scholars have studied the field of resource security. Christina Cook et al. comprehensively reviewed water security from both academic and policy literature, compared the definitions and analyzed methods of water security in different sciences, and put forward the idea of putting good governance first (Cook and Bakker 2012). Ronald Amundson analyzed the difficulties and challenges of policies related to soil resources in the management process (Amundson 2020). Ronald Vargas Rojas studied the relationship between soil health and food security and advocated the establishment of a global soil partnership to achieve world food security (Rojas et al. 2016). Yao Liming explored the relationship between water-energy food and proposed an important method to improve water quality (Yao et al. 2016). This research is of great significance for realizing resource conservation and sustainable development in the future (Xu and Yao 2022). Tatiana Ponomarenko (Ponomarenko et al. 2021) and Antoine Beylot (Beylot et al. 2021) conducted in-depth studies on the dilemmas and dissipation of mineral resources. Zeng Xianlai researched the sustainability of critical metals and e-waste management (Zeng et al. 2015; 2018). Also, other scholars have carried out analyses from the aspects of biological resources diversity (Fløjgaard et al. 2020), medical and health resources (Takura et al. 2021), sustainable circulation of water resources (Xiang et al. 2021; Shen et al. 2014; Sutapa et al. 2021), and mineral resource safety (Baninla et al. 2019; Shao 2019; Zhang et al. 2021). Based on the research of scholars, this paper systematically sorts out the research in the field of resource security and provides suggestions for policy.
In recent years, the number of relevant literature on resource security research is increasing, covering a wide range of topics involving multiple disciplinary fields. This brings certain drawbacks to the exploration of emerging research fields, research hotspots, and research frontiers of global resource security. The advent of big data has brought great value to all fields of current society (Wang and Lu 2020). Data mining, data analysis, and graphics processing technology are widely used in the research of various industries. The combination of computer technology and traditional mathematical statistics makes the visualization analysis of scientometrics possible. Scientometrics can intuitively reflect all the information in the research field through knowledge graphs to explore the research hotspots and future trends in specific fields. It is widely used in medical (Wang et al. 2019), intelligent manufacturing (Asemi and Ko 2020), business economics (Castillo-Vergara et al. 2018), artificial intelligence (Darko et al. 2020; Mustak et al. 2021), and other fields.
In this paper, we will use scientometric research methods from a new research perspective to comprehensively and systematically review relevant research in the field of global resource security and use Rostcm 6 published by Wuhan University and CiteSpace to conduct text mining, cluster analysis, co-citation analysis, network analysis, and emergent analysis to answer the following questions: (1) Which countries or regions, research institutions, and scholars have made outstanding contributions to the development of global resource security research? (2) What are the development trends, research frontiers, and future trends in the field of resource security? (3) Which journals have a significant influence in the field of resource security research? (4) What changes have scholars’ attention to resource security research? (5) What areas do international cooperation in resource security involve?
At present, the databases commonly used by international experts and scholars include PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar (Liao 2009). Each of these databases has its unique advantages and disadvantages. The best results can be obtained when using the PubMed database for keyword retrieval. It is mainly based on biomedical electronic research but lacks data from other fields (Falagas et al. 2008). Scopus database covers a wider range of journals. It can better provide keyword search and citation research. However, the Web of Science database is limited to recent publications (published after 1995) (Falagas et al. 2008; Anker et al. 2019; Chertow et al. 2021). As a bibliometric data collection tool, the Google Scholar database has a wide range of research, but the data quality is relatively low, and the repetition rate is high (Bar-Ilan 2010; Harzing 2019). Web of science is a comprehensive database (Orduna-Malea et al. 2019). It provides unified and standardized literature, which can better visualize the collected data. Most scholars prefer the Web of Science database for bibliometric and visual analysis (Chen et al. 2020; Radu et al. 2021).
Based on these reasons and to ensure the reliability of the data, this paper selected the core databases in Web of Science: Sci-Expanded, Ccr-Expanded, SSCI, and Index Chemicus to retrieve relevant literature data. The data collection method and scientometric analysis structure adopted are shown in Fig. 1. The determined search formula is TS = (global resource security) OR TS = (global resource safety) OR TS = (zero risk of global resources) OR TS = (International resource security) OR TS = (International resource safety) OR TS = (zero risk of international resources) AND PY = (1990–2021). TS = “Topic” is the expression used in Web of Science for advanced retrieval and then manually remove literature not related to this research topic. The literature analyzed in this paper does not include “gray literature” such as reports because such literature does not have the standard format for CiteSpace analysis. They will not have an excessive impact on the results of the visualization analysis (Hou et al. 2018).
Bibliometrics is a statistical method to quantitatively analyze scientific literature by applying the relevant theories of mathematics and statistics. By collecting and comparing papers from different sources in a specific research field, this paper summarizes the number of publications, research hotspots, and research methods to analyze the current research status and trends. Scientific knowledge mapping (mapping knowledge domains) is a kind of image that takes the knowledge domain as the research object. It shows the relationship between the development process and the structure of scientific knowledge. Also, it can help researchers analyze, judge, and predict the development dynamics and disciplinary frontier trends of certain subject areas (Chen 2006; Guo et al. 2015; Chen et al. 2015).
Among the numerous bibliometrics and knowledge mapping tools, CiteSpace developed by Professor Chen Chaomei from Drexel University in the USA is highly favored and recognized by researchers (Chen et al. 2014). This software is an information visualization software developed based on Java language (Liao 2009), which can present knowledge structure, distribution, and law through visualization. It is also commonly used to draw scientific knowledge maps to explore research hotspots, research frontiers, and research trends (Hou et al. 2018), specifically national cooperative research, institutional cooperative research, and author cooperative research. In this paper, we use CiteSpace 5.5 R2 as a metrological tool to visually analyze the knowledge structure, law in the field of global resource security, and conduct a co-citation analysis of relevant literature to explore knowledge clustering and distribution. At the same time, it carries out a detailed analysis of the cited literature to clarify the research hotspots and frontiers at this stage. Finally, based on the results of quantitative analysis, it constructs the knowledge map of global resource security research.
The number of scientific achievements can reflect the degree of scholars’ attention to a certain field. This paper retrieved 6391 literature data about global resource security, including 4973 articles, 1036 reviews, 255 proceedings papers, and 127 Editorial materials. The paper used the data analysis software ROSTCM 6 and the Excel tool to carry out statistics and draw the histogram, as shown in Fig. 2. From the time dimension distribution of literature publication quantity, the number of articles on resource security has increased exponentially, from 8 in 1995 to 978 in 2020; from another perspective, resource security-related research is receiving increasing attention from society and scholars from all walks of life. Besides, the growth rate of the literature can be roughly divided into three stages: the first stage is from 1995 to 2003; the number of literature grew slowly, and researchers started to explore the field of resource security; the second stage is from 2004 to 2008; the number of literature reached a rapid growth. After the SARS epidemic in 2003, the concept of human development changed, and people began to realize the importance of “total global work.” By sharing and managing global resources and strengthening cooperation, we can ensure orderly and sustainable human civilization (Guo 2004). This may be one of the reasons for the vital turning point of the number of papers in 2003. The third stage is from 2009 to 2021, the number of articles reached a boom period. The financial crisis has brought severe challenges to the resource security of all countries, which are gradually realizing that bundled economy will bring greater development conflicts. So far, more and more scholars are devoted to the research of resource security.
From the distribution of journals, we can see that more than 100 journals publish papers related to resource security. In this paper, the top 10 source journals of resource security are selected (as shown in Table 1). It can be seen that “Sustainability” has the largest number of papers published, while the Journal of Cleaner Production and Science of the Total Environment have relatively high impact factors in the top 10 journals, with impact factors of 7.246 and 6.551. The subject categories are “Green & Sustainable Science & Technology” and “Environmental Sciences & Ecology.” The discipline of these journals involves multiple disciplines such as Sustainable Science, Ecology Sciences, Environmental Sciences, and Atmospheric Sciences. This shows that the research in the field of resource security is interdisciplinary.
According to the statistical results, there are 357 institutions worldwide researching resource security. This paper selects the top ten institutions for statistics (according to the number of documents) and draws Table 2.
Different countries pay different research and attention to the field of resource security. According to the number of published papers, this paper selects the top 10 countries. The sigma value is calculated by centrality and saliency. Generally, the node with higher centrality and emergent will have a higher sigma value. It means that the structure and citation changes are significant (Chen 2011). “Peoples R China” is the abbreviation of “China” in the Web of Science database. This paper uses “China” to express. As shown in Fig. 5, the USA is the country with the largest number of published papers in the field of resource security in the world, with a total of 2145 papers, accounting for 33.6% of the total number of papers, followed by England (14.8%), China (11.0%), Australia (9.5%), Germany (7.6%), Canada (7.6%), Italy (5.8%), the Netherlands (5.8%), India (5.4%), and France (4.4%). In the top ten, only Peoples R China and India are the two developing countries located in Southeast Asia, while the rest are developed countries distributed in Europe, Australia, and the USA. This shows that the research on resource security is still mainly in developed countries, and the progress of developing countries is relatively slow.
This article plots the cooperation between countries. More connecting lines between developed countries are in the USA, the UK, and Canada. It indicates that cooperation and exchanges between countries are closer. From the perspective of intermediary centrality, Switzerland has the highest centrality with a centrality value of 0.13. It can be illustrated by the purple circle around the country map. Mexico ranks second with a centrality value of 0.12. Therefore, Switzerland, Mexico, and Kenya can significantly influence the research trend in resource security. The different colors in the nodes represent the distance of published literature in the country, and the distance from cold colors to warm colors represents the distance from far to near. The red circle on the node has seen an enormous increase in research in this area over a while. In the figure, the USA has the coldest colors. It indicates that the USA started to study the field of resource security in the early period and has a specific research foundation. China’s Taiwan, Uganda, Switzerland, and other regions with high emergence value significantly promote research development in this field. In general, the development of resource security is inseparable from the joint efforts of all countries (Fig. 6).
Cross-referencing between scientific literature can show that the literature is not an isolated individual but an interconnected and ever-extending system. In 1973, American intelligence scientist Small H first proposed the concept of co-citation as a method to measure the degree of relationship between documents (Small 1973). Co-citation refers to the relationship between two or more papers that are cited by one or more subsequent papers at the same time (Barlow et al. 2017). Therefore, the relationship between these two papers is called co-citation. Generally, highly cited literature shows the hot research in a field, and highly cited authors are considered to have a higher influence in related research fields. Thus, literature co-citation analysis using CiteSpace can discover the key literature and main research areas of resource security research.
In the cluster analysis of literature, CiteSpace software obtained a relatively high value of clustering results after several debugs, and its parameters were set as follows: timespan 1990–2021, time slice selected as 3, screening criteria as top 20, and log-likelihood ratio algorithm (LLR) was used to label the clusters. When the value of modularity Q in the clustering results is > 0.3 and mean silhouette is > 0.5, the clustering effect is significant. As shown in Fig. 7, there are 12 major clusters formed in this paper. The colors of different clustering blocks in the figure vary from cold to warm, representing the average clustering time from far to near. The red nodes in the color block represent the literature with emergent characteristics. The red nodes indicate that the clustering topic is the research frontier and hotspot.
To further understand the themes of the clusters, this paper summarizes the detailed information of clustering and makes it into Table 3. Mean (year) in Table 3 represents the average time of publication in the same cluster. It can be used to determine the migration pattern of research in resource security. As shown from Table 3, the Silhouette values of the clusters are all greater than 0.7. So, it indicates that the clusters have certain reliability. According to Fig. 7 and Table 3, the current collections of “food supply chain,” “water availability,” “wastewater,” and “soil resources suitability” are the frontiers and hotspots of research in the field of resource security. Besides, “sanitation and health resources,” “nutrient management,” “biodiversity,” and “food resources safety” are essential topics and directions of the current global resource security research.
This research finds that the number of articles covering the field of resource security has increased exponentially over the past few decades, from 8 publications in 1995 to 978 publications in 2020. The research areas are broad, covering theories and methods from multiple disciplines. This research indicates that sustainable development research under the combined effect of resource security and ecological stability has attracted scholars’ attention. “Sustainability” has the most publications, while “Journal of Cleaner Production” has the highest impact factor in the top ten journals.
Through the research on the number of publications and the number of citations, it is found that the proportion of core authors in the field of resource security does not meet the requirement of Lipes law. Therefore, there are no relatively stable core authors in this field, but a close collaborative group exists. Besides, the Chinese Academy of Science has published the largest number of papers among the research institutions. In recent years, the number of publications in China has been increasing. However, research in resource security is still focused on developed countries (Europe, USA, England, Australia, Germany, Canada), while developing countries (China, India) are relatively lacking. The areas of cooperation mainly involve water resources, land resources, and mineral resources. The collaboration between countries, institutions, and researchers should be enhanced. There is an urgent need to promulgate policies to address resource shortages and ecological crises jointly.
Besides, research on the integrated use of land resources will be a more active area in the coming decades. From cluster analysis and emergent analysis, we find that “food supply chain,” “water availability,” “wastewater,” and “soil resources suitability” are the frontiers and hotspots of research in the field of resource security. “Sanitation and health resources,” “biodiversity,” “food resources safety,” “land resources use,” “medical and health resources,” “mineral resource security” are essential topics and directions of current research, especially in the research on medical resources safety and mineral resources safety. After the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020, more people began to pay attention to their health and safety. How to coordinate human health development in the allocation of medical resources will focus on the following discussion. The mineral resource industry and supply chain’s security have become all countries’ attention. Scholars will pay more attention to it in the future.
Based on the data of 6391 articles on global resource security research retrieved from the Web of Science during 1990–2021, this article carries out a scientometrics analysis of the knowledge structure in this field and draws a comprehensive knowledge map. The research in global resource security is relatively extensive, involving the theories and methods of multiple disciplines. The cooperation among countries in global resource security needs to strengthen. The safe supply of global resources (water, food, medical and health, and mineral resources), prevention mechanisms, policies, and regulations require long-term attention and discussion. People will face more ecological crises and sustainable resource development issues in the future. Therefore, the degree of coupling and coordination among resource security, environmental stability, and sustainable development needs to explore in-depth.
This paper provides a detailed analysis of the scientific output, core authors, critical national institutions, high-impact journals, and citation content in the field of global resource security, thus providing researchers with an overview of the current stage of resource security. Through a more comprehensive and systematic mapping of knowledge in resource security, it is helpful to understand the current knowledge system in global resource security. This research provides valuable guidance for subsequent researchers and related personnel to explore the research direction and practice of resource security, to achieve ecological stability and sustainable development of resources.
We would like to declare that the work described was original research that has not been published previously and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, in whole or in part.
Thanks anonymous peer reviewers for helpful comments on the draft manuscript.
This research is funded by the Key Program of Sichuan Mineral Resources Research Center (No. SCKCZY2021-ZD001) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71991484 and 71991480).
Minxi Wang contributed to the conception of the study. Xinyu Kang wrote the original manuscript. Jing Lin performed the data analyses and collection. Xin Li reviewed and revised the manuscript.
All the authors listed have approved and participated in the enclosed manuscript.
Publication has been approved by all participants.
The authors declare no competing interests.
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Kang, X., Wang, M., Lin, J. et al. Trends and status in resources security, ecological stability, and sustainable development research: a systematic analysis. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 50192–50207 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19412-7
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