Bibliometric Analysis of Carbon Finance and Carbon Market: Methods and Data Sources

1. Research Methods and Data Sources

1.1 Research Methods The early discussions on bibliometrics began in the 1950s, and its methods include the application of quantitative techniques to bibliometric data (Pritchard 1969; Broadus 1987; Wallin 2005; Donthu et al. 2021). Currently, bibliometrics has been widely applied in various disciplines (Ekundayo and Okoh 2018; Wang et al. 2018b). There are two main purposes of bibliometric methods: performance analysis and scientific mapping (Cobo et al. 2011). Performance analysis aims to evaluate the research and publishing performance of individuals and institutions, while scientific mapping aims to reveal the structure and dynamics of scientific fields (Zupic and Cater 2015). Performance analysis can examine the contributions to specific fields, such as the performance of authors, institutions, countries, and journals. Scientific mapping can examine the relationships between research components and utilize techniques such as co-citation analysis, bibliographic coupling, co-word analysis, and co-authorship analysis.

Common software used for bibliometric analysis includes R studio, Vosviewer, Citespace, Gephi, BibExcel, and Histcite (Ampah et al. 2021). However, due to the limitations of Histcite in understanding Scopus data, it cannot be used in this study (Fahimnia et al. 2015). BibExcel runs in a complex operating environment and requires professional knowledge and experience for basic analysis (Ampah et al. 2021). Additionally, Citespace is used to convert Scopus data into WoS format to eliminate data duplication and better merge the data (Ye et al. 2020). Therefore, in this study, Citespace and Vosviewer are used for bibliometric analysis of the carbon finance and carbon market field.

1.2 Data Sources Web of Science and Scopus databases are used in this study, which are widely used citation indexes for bibliometrics and systematic literature evaluation. Considering the technical difficulties in merging different databases, researchers often choose to use only one database. A study by Gavel and Iselid (2008) confirmed that there is only a 50% overlap between the Scopus and WoS databases. Therefore, we use both databases to minimize the exclusion of high-quality relevant articles.

We used the search conditions set for carbon finance and carbon market in the SSCI and SCI-E sections of the Web of Science Core Collection and the Scopus database, with the title search terms 'carbon finan*', 'carbon market*', 'carbon trad*', 'carbon pric*', 'carbon asset*', and 'carbon tax*'. The search results were imported into Citespace for merging, and duplicate results were removed, resulting in a total of 5689 articles. The obtained results were then imported into Vosviewer for further analysis, as shown in Figure 1, using specific methods and techniques.