**1. Introduction**

The scenario of intense competitiveness is a reality that has led many countries to increasingly invest in their scientific and technological development, which is an essential pillar for the construction of a sustainable economy [1].

One of the consequences of this development is the large volume of scientific articles published daily in international databases for the dissemination and sharing of contributions and advances resulting from academic research of different groups of researchers from various universities and countries [1, 2].

In light of this, the importance of bibliometrics is worth noting, which is a method for measuring, monitoring, and studying scientific outputs [3, 4]. Bibliometrics enables the mapping and expansion of knowledge on a particular area of research, evidencing connections between the main publications, authors, institutions, themes, and other characteristics of the field under study [3, 5].

An important application of bibliometric methods is its use as a tool for research evaluation [2, 4]. Outstanding papers in bibliometric studies are considered as reliable and relevant sources of results and are often used to justify decisions on research policies, funds, job offers, and promotions and also to direct and support research projects on the basis of what is most relevant in the scientific literature [2, 6].

The evolution of knowledge is something that occurs all the time, and the novelty of the researchers' proposals is the basic premise for the development of scientific research with great scientific and applied contributions. Therefore, the analysis of the state of the art of the field studied is an indispensable step to choose a no table research problem, since it can reveal gaps that need to be filled in the literature and important studies to underpin the researchers' proposals [6].

In this sense, it is important to emphasize that research funding bodies have increasingly required evidence that the research they support has potential to impact society with innovations, advances, etc. [2, 4, 7, 8].

Bibliometric methods involve the use of several tools that can help researchers to identify a relevant and current research problem, thus making clear the potential impact of the research in case of it being developed [4, 6].

Information technology (IT) tools can be used to assist the process of searching for relevant scientific contents, collecting scientific data, and summarizing the results obtained. These tools may be extremely important in clarifying the direction of a particular field of study and what advances and developments this may still present [4, 6].

Bibliometric indicators, if properly analyzed, can give more consistence to the research project, since they use statistics from different bibliographic databases that differ in terms of scope, data volume, and coverage [4].

Thus, the researcher who develops the research project based on bibliometric analysis has the possibility of presenting the objectives and methods of his work clearly and concisely by illustrating which scientific gaps in the field will be filled with the development of its study.

Hence, the purpose of this chapter is to present a method of bibliometric analysis for mapping the state of the art and identifying gaps and trends of research in literature. Throughout the sections some important bibliometric tools and analysis to justify the development of research projects will be set out.

The proper use of the presented method allows the understanding of the gaps and research tendencies from the mapping of the state of the art of a field studied, being a path to be followed by researchers in the phase of elaboration of their research project in order to ensure that the studies present real scientific, applied, and social contributions.
