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An Investigation of the Underlying Evolution of Shale Gas Research's Domain Based on the Co-Word Network

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An Investigation of the Underlying Evolution of Shale Gas Research's Domain Based on the Co-Word Network sustainability Review An Investigation of the Underlying Evolution of Shale Gas Research’s Domain Based on the Co-Word Network Wen Li, Yuxi Liu, Siqi Xiao, Yu Zhang and Lihe Chai * School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300354, China; [email protected] (W.L.); [email protected] (Y.L.); [email protected] (S.X.); [email protected] (Y.Z.) * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +86-22-8789-1368 Received: 22 November 2017; Accepted: 9 January 2018; Published: 13 January 2018 Abstract: With the increasing shortage energy, the exploration and utilization of shale gas (SG) have greatly changed the world’s natural gas supply pattern. In this study, based on a bibliometric review of the publications related to SG, by analyzing the co-word networks during the past years, we provide comprehensive analyses on the underlying domain evolution of shale gas research (SGR). Firstly, we visualize the topical development of SGR. We not only identify the key topics at each stage but also reveal their underlying dependence and evolutionary trends. The directions of SGR in the future are implied. Secondly, we find the co-word network has small-world and scale-free characteristics, which are the important mechanisms of driving the evolution of SGR’s domain. Thirdly, we analyze China’s SGR. We find the co-word network in China’s SGR has not yet emerged obvious differentiation. Nevertheless, it has a similar self-organized evolution process with the co-word network of international SGR. Our above results can provide references for the future SGR of scholars, optimization or control of the domain and the strategy/policy of countries or globalization. Keywords: shale gas (SG); shale gas research (SGR); bibliometrics; co-word network; data mining 1. Introduction Based on the recent estimation from the U.S. EIA, there are 35,782 Trillion cubic feet (Tcf) risked shale gas in-place for 41 countries, of which 7299 Tcf shale gas is considered technically recoverable [1,2]. The effective exploitation of SG for solving human energy shortage problems has a great significance [3]. In 1970s, America began to rigorously pay attention to SG and did much related research and achieved commercial exploitation in the late 1990s [4–6]. With the situation that American natural gas production declined, the rapidly rising SG production promoted, in 2012, the U.S. has surpassed Russia in natural gas production for the first time since 1982 [7]. North American SG exploration greatly changed the North American and even the world’s natural gas supply pattern [8]. Canada has also achieved a commercial development of SG and a number of countries and regions carried on the prospecting or developing work and related pilot test of SG [9–12]. Other countries, such as Poland [13,14], Australia [15,16], England [17–19], South Africa [20,21], Brazil [22], India [23], pay much attention to the search of SG. SG has become the new darling energy in both global and regional scales. SG has complex characteristics such as large reserves, long production cycle, somewhat expensive exploration costs compared with other unconventional types of gas reservoirs and so on. The complexity of SG brings that the fields of SGR during the past years are diverse, which include theoretical SGR of analyzing the foundation of SG exploration [1,2,10,24–26], model investigation in SG [24,27–33], technical and economic research of considering the potential application of SG [7,25,33–36], the environmental impact Sustainability 2018, 10, 164; doi:10.3390/su10010164 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2018,, 10,, 164164 2 of 23 economic research of considering the potential application of SG [7,25,33–36], the environmental assessmentimpact assessment in SG exploitation in SG exploitation [21,37– 48[21,37–48]] and many and others.many others. Anyway, Anyway, with the with evolution the evolution from initial from exploitationinitial exploitation to the moreto the and more more and complicated more complicat developmented development of SG, theof SG, diverse the diverse research research of SG can of SG be foundcan be infound available in available literature literature during during past decades. past decades. To help To the help researchers, the researchers, government government policy-makers policy- andmakers managers and managers to comprehensively to comprehensively and critically and crit graspically this grasp rapidly this developingrapidly developing knowledge knowledge domain, itdomain, is very it necessary is very necessary for us to for carry us to out carry a bibliometric out a bibliometric research research based onbased the on analysis the analysis of a large of a large scale ofscale literature of literature related related to SGR, to SG goingR, going to reveal to reveal the key the topicalkey topical development, development, evolutionary evolutionary codes codes and underlyingand underlying dynamic dynamic law law hidden hidden in SGR. in SGR. Based Based on our on our analysis analysis of the of mainthe main research research fields fields of all of the all papers,the papers, the researchthe research fields fields of SG areof SG mainly are concernedmainly concerned with two with aspects: two First,aspects: the physicalFirst, the properties physical ofproperties shale reservoirs, of shale reservoirs, including porosity, including adsorption porosity, andadsorption desorption and ofdesorption SG; Thesecond of SG; The is the second technology is the oftechnology reservoir exploitation,of reservoir exploitation, the dominating the part dominating of which part is hydraulic of which fracturing, is hydraulic which fracturing, reflects that which the internationalreflects that the research international community research pays community more attention pays to more some attention basic researches to some that basic are researches closely related that toare the closely development related to of the SG. development However, the of words SG. Howe suchver, as groundwater the words such and as carbon groundwater dioxide alsoand appearcarbon atdioxide top 50 also keywords. appear at The top keywords 50 keywords. list reflects The keywor that environmentalds list reflects issuesthat envi relatedronmental to the issues development related ofto SGthe havedevelopment also received of SG the have attention also ofreceived researchers. the attention Compared of withresearchers. the international Compared level, with China the hasinternational conducted level, many China studies has on conducted the physical many properties studies ofon SG the reservoirs. physical properties The future of development SG reservoirs. of shaleThe future gas in development China will focus of shale on the gas improvement in China will of focus mining on technology. the improvement Once China of mining can overcome technology. the pressureOnce China of high-costcan overcome mining, the obtainpressure sufficient of high-cos watert mining, supply obtain and make sufficie breakthroughsnt water supply in key and mining make technologies.breakthroughs Given in key the mining huge technologies. SGR and rising Given domestic the huge demand, SGR and the rising SG market domestic in China demand, will havethe SG a promisingmarket in China future. will have a promising future. In this study, takingtaking “shale“shale gas” as thethe topictopic word,word, we will obtain a large scale of literatureliterature related to SGR from databasedatabase and thenthen tendtend toto revealreveal thethe keykey topics,topics, evolutionaryevolutionary dependence and evolutionary trends and underlying dynamic law of SGR by keyword analysis and co-word network method. After the introduction section, in next sectio section,n, we give our research method. In In third third section, section, we elaborate our resultsresults andand discussions.discussions. In last section,section, wewe givegive ourour summary.summary. 2. Methods The samples used in this study are searched from Web of Science’s core database with the topic word “shale gas” as the retrieval term. The first first literature searching of SG in Web of Science was in 1998. TheThe retrieval retrieval time time is fromis from 1998 1998 to 2016 to and2016 we and get 2528we get publications, 2528 publications, from which from 1665 which publication 1665 samplespublication are thensamples obtained are bythen keyword obtained screening. by keyword The time screening. distribution The of time these distribution publications isof shownthese inpublications Figure1. is shown in Figure 1. 600 565 500 466 400 288 300 191 count 200 94 100 39 6610 0 year Figure 1. The time distribution of the publications of SGR. The keyword analysis and co-word network method are here adopted. First of all, from the selected publications, we obtain a total number of 5462 keywords. Some pretreatments are necessary. For example, we combine the keywords “shale” and “shales” into one keyword “shale”; “fracture”, Sustainability 2018, 10, 164 3 of 23 The keyword analysis and co-word network method are here adopted. First of all, from the Sustainability 2018, 10, 164 3 of 23 selected publications, we obtain a total number of 5462 keywords. Some pretreatments are necessary. “fractures”,For example, “fracking”, we combine “hydraulic the keywords fracturing” “shale” and and “hydraulic “shales” fracture” into one into keyword one keyword “shale”; “hydraulic “fracture”, “fractures”,fracture”; “sedimentary “fracking”,“hydraulic basin” and fracturing” “sedimentary and basins” “hydraulic into
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