Recent research trends in organic Rankine cycle technology: A bibliometric approach

This work describes the contribution of researchers around the world in the field of the organic Rankine cycle in the period 2000–2016. A bibliometric approach was applied to analyze the scientific publications in the field using the Scopus Elsevier database, together with Science Citation Index Expanded.

Different aspects of the publications were analyzed, such as publication type, major research areas, journals, citations, authorship pattern, affiliations as well as the keyword occurrence frequency. The impact factor, h-index and number of citations were used to investigate the strength of active countries, institutes, authors, and journals in the organic Rankine cycle technology field.

From 2000 to 2016, there were 2120 articles published by 3443 authors from 997 research institutes scattered over 71 countries. The total number of citations and impact factor are 36,739 and 4597, respectively, corresponding to 17 citations per paper and an impact factor of 2.168 per publication. The research articles originate primarily from China, the USA, and European countries.

Results indicate that China, the United States, Italy, Greece, Belgium, Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom are the leading countries in organic Rankine cycle research and account for 64% of the total number of publications. The core research activities in the field are mainly focused on applications of the organic Rankine cycle technology, working fluids selection/performance, cycle architecture, and design/optimization.

The most productive journal, author, institution, and country are Energy, Ibrahim Dincer, Tianjin University China and China, respectively.