Knowledge mapping of research on securing the supply chain for critical minerals: A scientometrics and text mining approach

Abstract

As clean energy technologies proliferate globally, demand for critical minerals has surged, sparking widespread concern about the security of the critical minerals supply chain. However, given the traditional scientometric methods lack of consideration of the importance of keywords and thematic analysis means cannot adaptively extract the core theme, this paper extracts the literature related to critical mineral supply chain security (CMSCS) from the Web of Science literature database system during 1995–2022. We first use scientometrics to analyze the publication volume, author collaboration, institutional collaboration, and national collaboration of CMSCS; secondly, we use cosine distance and nearest neighbor classification algorithms to analyze the dynamic development status of CMSCS, and finally, we utilize the TF-IDF algorithm and the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) text mining method to model the topics in this field. The results show that (1) global research on CMSCS is rapidly developing. China currently has the most literature in the field of CMSCS. The US, China, and the United Kingdom have the most influential research. (2) The authors collaborated to form nine core teams. The core institutions are the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Politecnico di Milano. Most collaborative teams or institutions have strong internal collaborative links. (3) The research hotspots of CMSCS are influenced by national policies, technological development, and social consumption demand, "circular economy", "lithium battery", "recycling potential", and "recycling technology" are the directions that need to be focused on in the future. (4) Supply chain risk assessment, resilience enhancement, and recycling are important topics for future research in this field. In addition, future research on CMSCS should focus on assessing the vulnerability, resilience, and robustness of the critical mineral supply chain from the perspective of the "whole chain" to ensure the security of the global critical mineral supply chain. The research in this paper can help researchers and policy makers to quickly understand the research status and trend direction of CMSCS and provide essential references for promoting the sustainable and resilient management of global CMSCS.