Bibliometric Analysis of Published Literature on Industry 4.0

Abstract

Research on Industry 4.0 was initiated in 2012. Since then, the term “Industry 4.0” has been widely used among researchers to further investigate the development of technologies in the related industry. Thus, the aim of this study is to analyze the scientific literature published in the field of Industry 4.0. Scopus database was utilized to collect all literature in Industry 4.0. Publish or Perish software was used to incorporate the obtained data, while VOSviewer was used for data visualization. SPSS and Microsoft Excel were employed for data analysis. The growth of publications, research productivity and citation analysis were presented using standard bibliometric analysis. Based on the search results, a total of 1256 documents were retrieved. The growth rate of literature in Industry 4.0 increased drastically year by year since 2012. Most of the articles were published in journals and conferences, mainly in English. Most of the research in Industry 4.0 was in the engineering field. Keywords of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) were the most keywords used and represent the main areas of research covered in Industry 4.0. Most of the research related to Industry 4.0 was conducted in Germany and multi-authored with a mean collaboration index of 3.65 authors per article. This study presents the evolution of the scientific literature in Industry 4.0 and identifies areas of current research interests and potential directions for future research.