30 Years of Geographic Information Systems Studies in Turkey: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Today, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are widely used in many fields, especially in the field of geography. GIS, which provides data storage, digitization, querying and reporting in computer environment, has become an effective tool in recent years thanks to various software and hardware. Although there is a trend increase in GIS studies in the world, no analysis has been made about the literature in Turkey. The aim of this study is to determine which concepts are studied on GIS in Turkey, how the change takes place over the years, and which concepts are the future trends. For this purpose, publications with 'GIS' in the title, keyword and abstract were scanned in the Scopus database. From 1990, which was the first publication, to 2020, 1325 articles were found among the researchers from Turkey (17.10.2022). The obtained data were analysed bibliometrically with the VOSviewer program. According to the results of the research, the most prominent concepts in the GIS literature in Turkey are concepts such as remote sensing, land use, landslide, slope, forest. Concepts such as Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), network analysis, urban planning, climate change and multi-criteria decision-making analysis are the most studied concepts in recent years. It has been determined that the most cited studies are in the field of geology. While on the basis of countries the most cooperation is made with the USA, England, Germany and Iran, countries such as Netherlands, Sweden and China have been identified as prominent collaborations in recent years. Finally, when the collaborations between the researchers were examined on an individual basis, it was determined that the individual relationship networks were weak and the researchers conducted partnerships with the same researchers in a limited environment.