**3. Methodology**

To understand the research progress, we have taken a scientometric approach using Scopus database which is one of the widely used database for this purpose. Scopus is the most comprehensive index of scholarly articles, books, and proceedings from scientific conferences and journals. Scopus provides a global overview of research in the areas of science, technology, medicine, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities, with useful capabilities for monitoring, analyzing, and visualizing this data. We ran a search with keywords during December 2022 which is adopted by using trial and error method as mentioned below. Keywords and selection of them influence the outcome of bibliometric research and care should be taken in arriving at keywords. The whole methodology is divided into keyword finalization, database search, outlier removal, bibliometric study, analysis and recommendations which is provided in the following sections.

#### **3.1 Method**

Scientometric analysis was used to rank the papers written about fracture mechanics during a specific period (2000–2023). Publication trends in academic works such as research articles, conference papers, and other scholarly documents can be analyzed quantitatively and statistically with the help of a technique called scientometric. On December 3, 2022, researchers went through the Scopus database (www.scopus.com). By conducting the search on a single day, we avoided the potential for bias caused by the databases being updated on a daily basis. For this study, researchers looked back at the papers indexed by Scopus between the years 2000 and 2023. There are

other databases available for the same study including Web of Science, Dimensions, Lens etc. which are also widely used by researchers. Scopus is the go-to database for scientometric and bibliometric investigations due of its large data set and its widely adopted in bibliometrics study [28–30]. The scholarly community agrees that Scopus is the best and largest database of its kind. It is now widely used as a bibliometric data source by many researchers. The authors of this study set out to create a bird's-eye view of the scientific landscape that has contributed to our knowledge of how fracture mechanics is used in engineered soil development. Both the intellectual (cocitation network) and social (collaboration network) structures of the gathered data were explored (co-occurrences of authors/keywords, theme progression).

#### **3.2 Search query**

To retrieve the scientometric data on finite element analysis and weak soil, the following search query was run in the main search interface of the Scopus database in the search field type:

(TITLE-ABS-KEY (fracture AND mechanics) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY (soil)) AND PUBYEAR >1999 AND PUBYEAR >1999

#### **3.3 Inclusion/exclusion criteria**

Authors ran the search using keywords in Scopus database and 1546 documents were found in the first search. A time frame of 2000–2023 is kept for publication only. Publications, conference papers, book chapters, reviews, and books were filtered out, leaving a total of 1558 results after narrowing the publication stage to "final." The top ten nations for publishing articles in the topic of Fracture mechanics of soil were also considered. All materials must be written in English to be considered. The remaining 1558 entries were published between the years 2000 and 2023 and include articles (N = 1079), conference papers (N = 402), book chapters (N = 14), review articles (N = 25), and books (N = 4). This paper introduces a novel methodology for conducting a comprehensive literature evaluation on soil fracture mechanics by combining scientometric and complex network analyses. Figure depicts a description of the research procedure and the incorporation of analytical techniques. In order to ensure that the items selected were consistent and that the results were accurate, two authors of this research followed the identical procedures.

The 1558 documents that were returned were analyzed using a variety of bibliometric techniques to extract useful information. Microsoft Office Excel (Version 2209) was utilized for several fundamental tasks, such as gaining insight into publication and citation trends. The authors used a variety of programmes to assist with data visualization, including VOS viewer (version 1.6.15), Origin Pro 2022b (64-bit), and Biblioshiny (version 4.1.1). Relationships in citations, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, and co-authorship were also discovered with the help of these technologies.

#### *3.3.1 Analysis of the overall growth trend*

**Figure 1** below summarizes the main results of the bibliometric analysis to describe the collection size in terms of number of documents, number of authors, number of sources, number of keywords, timespan, references, and average number of citations. Furthermore, many different co-authorship indices are shown.

*Fracture Mechanics Application in Soil Strength Identification: A Scientometric Analysis DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112451*

**Figure 1.**

*Summary of the main results of the bibliometric analysis.*

**Figure 2.** *Publication and citation trend on fracture mechanics.*

**Figure 2** shows the year-wise frequency of publications and citations of wave propagation through fracture mechanics literature from 2000 to 2023. The number of publications and citations have significantly increased over the years. The most successful publication year was 2021, in which the highest (130) number of articles were published. On the other hand, the highest number of citations (3607) were seen in the year 2022. More number of publications happening in an year is influenced by many factors including funding availability, increasing demand, increasing collaboration between authors, research tie up between institutions etc. It is found that the average publication in an year is well above many domains and it is showing the increasing awareness among authors.

#### *3.3.2 Top ten publishing countries*

The top ten highly productive countries are shown in **Figure 3**, which shows the interest generated among the country research which is in turn attributed to many other parameters including applicability, funding available, policy decisions etc. It can be seen that the most productive country, China had produced 604 publications, the United State and United Kingdom produced 284 and95 publications followed by Australia and Canada with 84 and 76 publications during the period of the study. The results show that China has outstanding productivity with 604 publications and 7068 citations; followed by the United States with 284 publications and 5999 citations.

#### *3.3.3 Top ten high-research-producing institutions*

The top 10 research-producing organizations are shown in **Figure 4**. The top 2 organizations had 80 and 78 publications, respectively. The Northwestern Polytechnic University emerged as the most productive organization with 80 publications, followed by the Not reported with 78 publications. The China University, Nanjing University and Tsinghua University produced 75, 57 and 55 articles, respectively.

#### *3.3.4 Most prolific authors*

Results from the top ten most prolific scholars in the field of fracture mechanics application in soil strength analysis from 2000 to January 2023 is obtained. These scholars have shown consistency by contributing to the research in this field. The highest number of documents are produced with no author name provided until 2000 to 2023. The results revealed that Wang Y from China had produced 24 documents and earned the highest citation count of 619. He also has the highest h-index, which

**Figure 3.** *Top ten highest- publishing countries and their corresponding citation.*

## *Fracture Mechanics Application in Soil Strength Identification: A Scientometric Analysis DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.112451*

#### **Figure 4.**

*Top ten most highly productive organizations.*

suggests that Liux remains the most impactful author in the field of finite element analysis and weak soil. Liux's first article was published in 2011 with total citations per year of 6. Although our result shows that Liux has no publication in between 2012 and 2020, however, he has consistently published in this field between 2011 and 2021. The second most prolific scholar in this field is Zhang J from China. Zhang J has 15 publications. Zhang J began publishing in the field of finite element analysis and weak soil in 2010, where he had two publications and consistently published 1, 3, 2, and 2 papers in 2010, 2014, 2015, 2019, respectively, and yet to publish in the year 2022. Similarly, the results show that Shivashankar from India, Liu Y and Ylian S from China, have h-index of 6, 5, 4 and 4 respectively based on our dataset; hence, they have immensely impacted the field of finite element analysis. Other impactful scholars in this field may also be present but this work is confined to the database obtained during the study period only (**Table 1**).

