A historical review and bibliometric analysis of GPS research from 1991–2010

We performed a bibliometric analysis of published research on Global Positioning System (GPS) for the period of 1991–2010, based on the Science Citation Index and Social Sciences Citation Index databases. Our search identified a total of 15,759 GPS-related publications in the period. We analyzed the patterns of publication outputs, subject categories and major journals, international productivity and collaboration, geographic distribution of authors, and author keywords. The annual number of publications in GPS research increased from 98 in 1991 to 1934 in 2010. “Geochemistry & Geophysics”, “Geosciences, Multidisciplinary”, and “Engineering, Electrical & Electronic” were the top 3 most popular subject categories. As the flagship journal in the field, Geophysical Research Letters had the highest publication count. The USA, the UK and Germany were the top 3 most productive countries. The most productive institution was the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), followed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Colorado. The USA was the most frequent partner in international collaborations. Caltech took the central position in the collaboration network. The major spatial clusters of authors were in the USA, the Europe Union, and East Asia (including China, Japan and South Korea). “Ionosphere”, “Remote Sensing” and “Monitoring” are growing research subjects in the field of GPS, while “Deformation”, “Geoid” and “Tectonics” are becoming gradually less significant. Our study revealed underlying patterns in scientific outputs and academic collaborations and may serve as an alternative and innovative way of revealing global research trends in GPS.