Biochar in the 21st century: A data-driven visualization of collaboration, frontier identification, and future trend

The massive amounts of publication data are highly valuable, because in addition to the advancement in science, technology, and policy, such data can provide critical information and guidance on what have been published, what topical changes have evolved, and what are the trending fields deserving more attention. In the 21st century, biochar has played an indispensable role in the long-term global development strategies in response to Carbon neutralization, Agricultural management, and Environmental restoration, and accumulated many high-quality publications. Herein, this study provides a new data-driven bibliometric analysis strategy and framework for mining the core content of massive literature data, and aims at bringing unique insights for the research prospects as well as opportunities of biochar. The results show that biochar researches have made great progress from 1999 to 2020, but cross-disciplinary teamwork should be further emphasized. The research frontier identification reveals that sewage treatment, efficient removal, and functional composite materials will be the issues which must be paid continual attention at present and in the future. Furthermore, studies on global climate impact, biomass resource utilization, carbon sequestration, carbon cycle, and even the negative effects of biochar have gradually begun to be taken seriously.(c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This study introduces a data-driven method for analyzing a large amount of literature data to provide insights into the research prospects and opportunities of biochar. The results show that biochar research has made progress, but cross-disciplinary teamwork needs to be strengthened, and attention should be given to issues such as sewage treatment, efficient removal, and functional composite materials.