In the nexus of the coal mining industry and transition to sustainability: A comprehensive bibliometric analysis

This paper presents a review of research papers concerning the coal mining industry and its transition to sustainability (CMITS). The methodology involves a bibliometric analysis using the Scopus database and the Bibliometrix R-tool, applied to a dataframe spanning 33 years (1990 to 2023), by categorizing the CMITS into 12 categories. Conclusions were derived for the temporal evolution of scientific production, keyword analysis, authors’ collaboration, and contributions by country, and were visualized through R-biblioshiny. Background The tendency of coal mining industries to incorporate their activities into the context of sustainability has increased steadily in recent years, driven by worldwide efforts to transition to a new energy-mix model that targets minimizing environmental impact. Achieving sustainability in the mining industry requires a series of transformative steps, ranging from extraction methods to the use of mining equipment, fostering a coevolution between industries and communities. This transition is a significant and complex challenge, attracting research interest from diverse fields, including social science, renewable energy, economics, political science, humanities and public policy. Consequently, the respective literature on this topic has expanded considerably over time. When conventional literature reviews become insufficient for managing the vast and rapidly growing body of research on a specific issue, bibliometric analysis is often employed. Fig. 1 Methodological workflow. Although bibliometrics is not a novel methodology — its origin dates back to the 1950s — it remains a crucial tool for organizing the overwhelming volume of academic literature and the multifaceted and multidisciplinary nature of the subject. This paper presents the temporal evolution of the research publications concerning the CMITS, aiming to (1) identify the predominant topics in scholarly publications regarding the coal mining industry’s transition to sustainability, (2) identify the organizations and countries that contributed the most to research on the coal mining industry’s transition to sustainability, (3) identify the knowledge gaps that exist in the current literature on the transition from coal mining to sustainability and (4) identify the potential directions for future research in the field. Methods The methodology was designed and developed by first discretizing the 12 research categories, as the coal mining industry and its transition to sustainability constitute complex and multiparametric aspects with a wide variety of research issues to be investigated. The research categories are: (1) mining operations (MINOPS), (2) environmental engineering (ENVENG), (3) socioeconomic aspects (SOECON), (4) sustainability and circular economy (SUSTCE), (5) transition strategies evaluation (TRASEV), (6) technological and natural hazards (TENAH), (7) policy and regulatory aspects (POLREG), (8) technology, education and innovation (TEDINN), (9) stakeholders engagement and consultation (STAKEC), (10) financial and investment (FININV), (11) mining planning and project management (MPRMNGT) and (12) transformation engineering (TRSENG). The main search of the articles per category was employed with the defined keywords. The steps involved screening the data (merging, deduplicating, and removing missing data) in the RStudio environment, while the primary bibliometric analysis was conducted using the R-Bibliometrix tool. Figure 1 presents the methodological workflow. Results and discussion As shown in Fig. 2, the distribution of the 29,760 articles exhibits an exponential-like behavior, indicating a growing interest over the last four years. Between 2019 and 2023, 12,260 articles were published, accounting for 42 percent of the total publications over the 33 years. Fig. 2 Total number of relevant papers published each year (all the research categories were encountered), and mean total citation rates per year on CMITS from 1990 to 2023. Figure 3 presents the increasing trend of published papers for each research category between 1990 and 2023, divided into seven five-year periods. The number of publications in the 1990 to 2004 period was under 1,000 for each research category, and the observed fluctuations were very mild. Since 2005, the number of published documents has increased rapidly, reaching a peak in 2023, across all research categories, although with varying development rates per category. As shown in Fig. 3, the categories ENVENG and MINOPS exhibit higher publication rates in all phases, followed by the TEDINN, STAKEC and MPRMNGT categories. The ENVENG category produced an average of 104 articles annually during the first period, while during the seventh period, the average annual production increased 12-fold to 1,283 articles per year. Figure 4 presents a quantitative visualization of the 50 most-used words in scientific articles from all 12 research categories. Conclusions The main conclusions of the present study are: Fig. 3 Evolution of the number of published papers per five-year interval from 1990 to 2023 by research category. The most frequently discussed topics are ENVENG, SUSTCE, TENAH, SOECON and POLREG.China is the leading contributor, producing more than 55 percent of the global publications, followed by the United States, India, Poland and Australia. China is the world’s major coal mining producer, so it is often incorporated as a case study in many articles’ titles.The most frequent words/phrases that emerged in more than 1,000 published articles are groundwater, risk assessment, environmental monitoring, human, water quality, subsidence, methane, rocks, aquifers, rock mechanics, coal seam, environmental impact and sustainable development. Fig. 4 Tree map depicting the frequency of keywordsplus terms in all categories. Some knowledge gaps identified through the bibliometric analysis pertain to underexplored research areas. Specifically, transition strategies evaluation (TRASEV) and policy and regulatory aspects (POLREG) exhibit less research, indicating insufficient attention to strategic frameworks and legislative analyses for sustainable transitions. Countries such as India, Indonesia, South Africa, Vietnam, Pakistan, Mongolia, Bangladesh and Colombia face challenges in balancing development needs with sustainability goals, limited access to advanced technologies, and vulnerability to socioeconomic disruptions during transitions to cleaner energy sources. References A list of all references is available in the full paper.

In the nexus of the coal mining industry and transition to sustainability: A comprehensive bibliometric analysis

Authored by: Aikaterini Servou, Philip-Mark Spanidis, Francis Pavloudakis and Christos Roumpos

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