Across the waves: a bibliometric analysis of container shipping research since the 1960s

Abstract

International audienceThe paper investigates collaborative and semantic patterns that emerged between 1967 and 2013 about the theme of container shipping based on a corpus of 294 articles published in scholarly journals within the fields of transportation, supply chain, economics, geography, regional planning and development, and operations research. An analysis based on the co-occurrence of title words allows identifying dominant sub-themes and their evolution. Main results point to the gradual diversification of container shipping research, from the dominance of economics towards a more trans-disciplinary set of approaches which integrate port-related activities and multimodal networks. Yet, disciplinary specialization remains strong up to nowadays so that container shipping research remains rather fragmented. While co-authorships have increased over time, they remain polarized by few, weakly connected research battalions. Our study suggests that research on container shipping would benefit from more frequent contacts between such communities to foster in-depth cross-disciplinary studies and fundamental cooperation

A survey of shipping finance research: Setting the future research agenda

“…In contrast, a gradual emergence of more extensive research collaborations is evident in the next two periods (2000s and post-2000s), where the average of the weighted degree increased from 1.1 in the pre-2000s period to 3.1 in the 2000s and 3.2 in the post-2000s periods. This is consistent with the findings of Lau et al (2017), a paper on the evolution of the co-authorship network in the container shipping research area. They argue that the development of connectivity among academic researchers can be largely attributed to rapid progresses in telecommunications and people's mobility (e.g.…”

“…In spite of the impact of shipping finance to both the academic community and business practice, to date, and to the best of our knowledge, there is no comprehensive survey of published research in this area. Notwithstanding, a number of studies have attempted to address conceptualization, methodological issues, theoretical developments, academic taxonomy and future research directions in areas relevant to transportation, such as quantitative modelling in shipping (Glen, 2006); port management (Steenken et al, 2004;Pallis et al, 2010;Pallis et al, 2011;Woo et al, 2011;Woo et al, 2012;Ng, 2013), logistics and supply chain management (Mentzer and Kahn, 1995;Ho et al, 2002;Burgess et al, 2006;Panayides, 2006), shipping freight derivatives (Kavussanos and Visvikis, 2006b;, ocean container shipping (Lau et al, 2013;Lau et al, 2017;Lee and Song, 2017), and maritime transport (Shi and Li, 2017).…”

Multidimensional examination of the performances of a liner shipping network: trunk line/route operated by conventional (Panamax Max) and mega (ULC - ultra large container) ships

“…The results have indicated the gradual diversification of the research from the prevailing economic consideration at the beginning to the more multi-disciplinary approach also integrating the seaport-related operations and multimodal networks serving the freight/cargo demand door-to-door towards the end of the considered period. Finally, the co-authorship in carrying out this research has been increasing over time although the approach has remained fragmented due to the strong disciplinary specialization (Lau et al 2018;Wang et al 2018). b) Research on modelling, and optimization of the operational and economic performances of the liner shipping networks has generally dealt with explaining the factors influencing growth in the container ship size means by the liner service cash flow model.…”

Measuring Water Transport Efficiency in the Yangtze River Economic Zone, China

“…Transport efficiency refers to the comparative relationship between the input of transport resources and the actual effective output as a synthesized measure of the operational status and development potential of the transport system [1], which represents transport development. The study of transport efficiency emerged in western society in the mid to late 1970s [2] and then rapidly increased in contemporary container shipping research (i.e., after 1999) [3]. Transport efficiency is now a key performance metric of the transportation industry.…”