Mapping of publications on asphalt pavement and bitumen materials: A bibliometric review.

• Bibliometric analysis on global asphalt and bitumen research was reported. • Standard research score and cumulative research output score were concluded. • Productive journal, institute, countries and authors were studied. • Core research activities and the potential cooperators were recommended. Many researches are being performed for design of asphalt pavement and its materials for sustainability and use of renewable energy. This research conducted a bibliometric analysis on the peer-reviewed journal papers published since 2000, with the terms "asphalt" or "bitumen" in their titles. Statistics such as top productive countries, organizations, journals, authors, ESI highly cited papers, most-cited papers, and core research activities were plotted and analyzed. Standard research score and cumulative standard research output score were defined and calculated to minimize the data differentials between the statistics analyzed. The records from Web of Science indicated that three-quarters of the researchers in the world prefer to use the term "asphalt" rather than "bitumen" in their writing. The People's Republic of China and the United States of America together produced 60% of journal papers in asphalt-related topics. Asphalt-related research papers were mostly published in journals such as Construction and Building Materials, Transportation Research Record, Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering, Road Materials and Pavement Design. The records of keywords illustrate that innovational technologies, such as cold recycling and self-healing, are increasingly developed and used in asphalt pavement engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]