A bibliometric review is a quantitative route of reviewing existing literature that provides cogent information like the structure and trend of specific topic areas. Additionally, it gives a graphical representation of output with detailing to inform policy. Bibliometric review is an efficient method compared to conventional style literature (Dominković, Weinand, Scheller, D'Andrea, & McKenna, 2022; Ejsmont et al., 2020; Mumu, Tahmid, & Azad, 2021). Numerous software applications are used in the bibliometric exploration, RStudio, UCInet, VOSViewer, SITKIS, CitNetExplorer, CiteSpace, HistCite, Bibexcel, Network Workbench Tool, etc. To create efficient scientometric software, JJ Allaire started RStudio in 2009 (Johnson, 2020). R is a programming language for statistical computing and graphics used in the scientific literature on coal mining safety and coal control technologies. The software includes numerous bibliometric mapping capabilities, such as collaboration, topics, and citation-based analysis. The data was gathered on 5 August 2022 from the Web of Science Core Collection, which Clarivate Analytics owns.
2.1. Annual Scientific Production
As a result of the evolving development in the coal mining safety sector, numerous scholarly studies have been conducted on this topic. The scope of this topic will be studied by reviewing 710 research papers from the Mendeley repository. The Scopus index was queried using the following search term TITLE-ABS-KEY ( "safety management" OR "safety culture " OR "foam dust removal" AND "coal mining" OR "coal mine" OR "coal suppresant" OR "coal dust" OR "coal pollution" OR "microbial" ) AND ( LIMIT-TO ( PUBYEAR,1991–2022) in the field of Safety Management, Safety Culture, Coal Mining, Coal Pollution, Dust Suppresant, Chemical Suppresant, and Microbial Suppresant. Figure 2 shows the growth in scientific research on the Industry's development for coal mine safety over the past few years. 1819 Authors reported an annual growth rate of 12.45% from 374 source journals specializing in coal mine safety. The growth in annual outputs demonstrates the increased interest among scientific circles in coal mine safety. There were 3.59 co-authors per document who contributed significantly to this topic. Their collaboration analysis reveals the leading scholars and author's social connection to coal mine safety, as shown in Fig. 3.
2.2. Country Scientific Production
Another significant feature of this study is comparing different countries' research output. As a result, more than 91% of articles published came from the top ten nations. Table 1 lists the articles of the top ten research-producing countries based on the main distribution field of safety in coal mining literature. According to the study, academics from two countries have significantly impacted coal mine safety: China (662 articles) and the United States (144 articles). Figure 4 demonstrates global research development on a globe. This data indicates that most developing countries have not conducted many studies in this research field.
Table 1
The top 10 productive countries with research on safety in coal mining
Country
|
Frequency
|
Country
|
Frequency
|
CHINA
|
662
|
BELGIUM
|
37
|
USA
|
144
|
NETHERLANDS
|
37
|
UK
|
63
|
SOUTH KOREA
|
30
|
ITALY
|
58
|
AUSTRIA
|
27
|
AUSTRALIA
|
57
|
SPAIN
|
25
|
2.3. Country of the Correspondent Author
The participation of researchers from various countries indicated that the study was conducted in strong cooperation. Figure 5 shows how researchers worldwide have come together to work on this topic. The data suggest that many co-authors collaborated, which may inspire further study. The corresponding authors' evaluations of single country publications (SCP), multiple country publications (MCP) and multiple country publications ratio (MCPR) were also recorded. Of the 317 studies conducted in China, 19 were published as MCP, and 9 of the 41 articles in the USA were published as MCP. Australia published 13 of the 26 articles as SCP, followed by the United Kingdom, 14 of the 18 publications as SCP. China and the United States ranked first in both SCP and MCP, as shown in Table 2.
Table 2
Corresponding author's specific results by countries
Country
|
Articles
|
SCP
|
MCP
|
Freq
|
MCP_Ratio
|
CHINA
|
317
|
298
|
19
|
0.446
|
0.06
|
USA
|
41
|
32
|
9
|
0.058
|
0.22
|
AUSTRALIA
|
26
|
13
|
13
|
0.037
|
0.5
|
UNITED KINGDOM
|
18
|
14
|
4
|
0.025
|
0.222
|
BELGIUM
|
15
|
6
|
9
|
0.021
|
0.6
|
KOREA
|
14
|
12
|
2
|
0.02
|
0.143
|
ITALY
|
9
|
7
|
2
|
0.013
|
0.222
|
CANADA
|
8
|
4
|
4
|
0.011
|
0.5
|
NETHERLANDS
|
8
|
4
|
4
|
0.011
|
0.5
|
MCP, Multiple Country Publication SCP, Single Country Publication |
2.4. Analysis of Correspondence and Map of the Conceptual Structure
The co-word analysis aims to identify relationships and interactions between the topics researched and emerging research trends by assessing word co-occurrences. According to a conceptual structure map depicted in Fig. 6, the lower cluster contains the greatest number of terms, indicating that scholars' focus has been drawn to safety in the coal mining industry.
When multiple correspondence analysis was applied to the Keywords Plus field, two clusters with a minimum of 50 keywords each were identified in the network. The journal's content was predominantly focused on coal mine safety issues, as seen by the conceptual organization of Keywords Plus and the authors' keywords, which were obtained from abstracts or titles.
2.5. Thematic Map
Thematic networks were revealed using a conceptual structure network and keyword co-occurrence analysis. Networks were traced using a two-dimensional matrix that addressed two types of thematic network measurement. These are the measures of centrality and density. Figure 7 of the thematic map depicts the density on the vertical axis. It represents the proportion of existent edges to feasible edges between clusters of surrounding nodes. With a larger or smaller number of relationships between one node and another, external connectivity serves as a measure of centrality. The centrality and density of a group are illustrated using a theme. The significance of a theme can be inferred from the research field of interest.
Thematic maps represent network clusters inside each plot, and their labels are determined by the word with the highest occurrence value. For example, the upper-right quadrant illustrated for motor themes includes topics such as coal, coal mining, animals, food contamination, food safety, and safety management. The lower-right quadrant is devoted to safety-related topics. Emerging themes in the lower-left quadrant include water supply, water quality, risk assessment, and coal mining. Finally, in the upper-left quadrant, some issues are highly specialized, such as coal, coal mines, and accidents.
2.6. Temporal Analysis of the Most Frequent Keywords
Considering the most frequent keywords linked with the main content of the articles, keyword analysis is essential in identifying major research areas in coal mine safety. For instance, the terms "coal mining," "risk assessment," "safety management," "accidents," and "human" have all been recognized as highly relevant terms in the study works, as shown in Table 3. Additionally, Fig. 8 displays a word cloud list of frequency of appearance during a specific timeframe, such as "safety", "occupational health", "food contamination", "microbiology", "quality control", "coal mine safety", "food control", and "bacteria" were the top ten most often used keywords.
Table 3
The most common keywords used in the coal mine safety industry
Words
|
Occurrences
|
Words
|
Occurrences
|
Coal Mines
|
291
|
Safety
|
140
|
Safety Management
|
256
|
Coal Mining
|
134
|
Coal
|
202
|
Humans
|
133
|
Risk Assessment
|
169
|
Article
|
130
|
Human
|
144
|
Accidents
|
112
|
2.7. Most Cited Countries
Figure 9 depicts the countries with the highest number of citations in coal mine safety topics across 65 countries and regions. Again, China was revealed to have the most citations with (2148 citations), followed by the United States (701 citations), Australia (539 citations), and the United Kingdom with (527 citations).
2.8. Contributions of Countries to the Societal Structure
The cooperation relationship between countries in the investigated field was studied using collaboration networks analysis to research connected countries using the Bibliometric software. Figure 10 depicts the countries that contributed scientific research on coal mine safety issues. Australia mainly collaborates with Canada, Netherlands, Ireland, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany etc. Similarly, the close cooperation countries with the Belgium are Netherlands, Spain, Denmark, France, Japan, Uganda, Kenya etc. Furthermore, Belgium and the Netherlands have the most direct cooperation and research relationship in the coal mine safety industry. See Table 4.
Table 4
Collaboration of countries on coal mine safety
From
|
To
|
Frequency
|
AUSTRALIA
|
AUSTRIA
|
1
|
AUSTRALIA
|
BELGIUM
|
1
|
AUSTRALIA
|
CANADA
|
4
|
AUSTRALIA
|
DENMARK
|
1
|
AUSTRALIA
|
GERMANY
|
1
|
AUSTRALIA
|
IRELAND
|
2
|
AUSTRALIA
|
JORDAN
|
1
|
AUSTRALIA
|
KENYA
|
1
|
AUSTRALIA
|
NETHERLANDS
|
3
|
AUSTRIA
|
GERMANY
|
1
|
AUSTRIA
|
IRELAND
|
1
|
BELGIUM
|
CONGO
|
1
|
BELGIUM
|
DENMARK
|
2
|
BELGIUM
|
FRANCE
|
2
|
BELGIUM
|
IRELAND
|
1
|
BELGIUM
|
JAPAN
|
1
|
BELGIUM
|
KENYA
|
1
|
BELGIUM
|
MOROCCO
|
1
|
BELGIUM
|
NETHERLANDS
|
8
|
BELGIUM
|
PORTUGAL
|
1
|
BELGIUM
|
SENEGAL
|
1
|
BELGIUM
|
SPAIN
|
3
|
BELGIUM
|
SWITZERLAND
|
1
|
BELGIUM
|
UGANDA
|
1
|
CANADA
|
IRELAND
|
1
|
2.9. Most Cited Documents
Table 5
Most highly cited documents
Paper
|
DOI
|
Total Citations
|
TC per Year
|
Normalized TC
|
MENSAH P, 2002, BULL WHO
|
NA
|
238
|
11.33
|
7.60
|
HOWANITZ PJ, 2005, ARCH PATHOL LAB MED
|
NA
|
163
|
9.06
|
3.71
|
MCMEEKIN TA, 2006, INT J FOOD MICROBIOL
|
10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2006.04.048
|
162
|
9.53
|
9.79
|
CAO W, 2017, POWDER TECHNOL
|
10.1016/j.powtec.2017.01.019
|
129
|
21.50
|
7.99
|
BROWN MH, 2000, INT J FOOD MICROBIOL
|
10.1016/S0168-1605(00)00408-6
|
120
|
5.22
|
1.97
|
HUBERT C, 2005, APPL MICROBIOL BIOTECHNOL
|
10.1007/s00253-005-1897-2
|
115
|
6.39
|
2.62
|
CAI W, 2018, TUNN UNDERGR SPACE TECHNOL
|
10.1016/j.tust.2018.06.029
|
113
|
22.60
|
6.05
|
LIU C, 2013, INT J FOOD MICROBIOL
|
10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2013.02.026
|
106
|
10.60
|
8.20
|
ZHENG YP, 2009, J LOSS PREV PROCESS IND
|
10.1016/j.jlp.2009.02.010
|
106
|
7.57
|
7.08
|
HE X, 2012, SAF SCI
|
10.1016/j.ssci.2011.08.012
|
99
|
9.00
|
8.57
|
RYAN U, 2018, INT J PARASITOL
|
10.1016/j.ijpara.2017.09.004
|
96
|
19.20
|
5.14
|
JACXSENS L, 2009, INT J FOOD MICROBIOL
|
10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2009.02.018
|
93
|
6.64
|
6.21
|
BOLTON DJ, 2008, FOOD CONTROL
|
10.1016/j.foodcont.2007.04.006
|
93
|
6.20
|
3.27
|
BONNABRY P, 2005, QUAL SAF HEALTH CARE
|
10.1136/qshc.2003.007914
|
93
|
5.17
|
2.12
|
LUNING PA, 2008, TRENDS FOOD SCI TECHNOL
|
10.1016/j.tifs.2008.03.005
|
92
|
6.13
|
3.23
|
LAKE RJ, 2010, RISK ANAL
|
10.1111/j.1539-6924.2009.01269.x
|
90
|
6.92
|
9.82
|
WANG L, 2018, SAF SCI
|
10.1016/j.ssci.2017.11.007
|
86
|
17.20
|
4.60
|
GOUNADAKI AS, 2008, FOOD MICROBIOL
|
10.1016/j.fm.2007.10.001
|
86
|
5.73
|
3.02
|
HOCKENHULL JC, 2008, HEALTH TECHNOL ASSESS
|
10.3310/hta12120
|
79
|
5.27
|
2.77
|
KAWANISHI H, 2009, THER APHERESIS DIAL
|
10.1111/j.1744-9987.2009.00674.x
|
74
|
5.29
|
4.94
|
LEE S, 2013, J ENVIRON MANAGE
|
10.1016/j.jenvman.2013.04.010
|
72
|
7.20
|
5.57
|
AMAN F, 2020, PAK J MED SCI
|
10.12669/pjms.36.COVID19-S4.2776
|
69
|
23.00
|
9.06
|
BIVINS AW, 2017, ENVIRON SCI TECHNOL
|
10.1021/acs.est.7b01014
|
69
|
11.50
|
4.27
|
LUNING PA, 2011, FOOD CONTROL
|
10.1016/j.foodcont.2010.10.003
|
64
|
5.33
|
7.04
|
CAO Y, 2017, FUEL
|
10.1016/j.fuel.2017.04.053
|
63
|
10.50
|
3.90
|
The highly cited documents provide a basis for understanding the growth and direction of the safety concept within the coal mining industry. Below we chronicle highly cited papers and try to provide a supporting basis for their relevance.
To recognize the highly-cited documents in the field of coal mine safety, we studied the top documents with the most citations. Table 5 lists the top 25 most cited publications based on the number of citations in the Scopus database. Mensah, Yeboah-Manu, Owusu-Darko, and Ablordey (2002) had the most citations for their article on "Street foods in Accra, Ghana: how safe are they?" with (238 citations). This research examined the microbial quality of the foods sold on Accra's streets and the risk factors for their contamination. The study discovered that despite poor environmental cleanliness, street foods were nonetheless microbiologically healthy; however, public health officials still need to ensure stronger enforcement of the food sanitation rules. However, considering the effectiveness of using bacteria in coal mines, this study can be replicated in the coal mining industry. Farashahi, Bagherpour, Kalhori, and Ghasemi (2019) used microbiological agents like Bacillus subtilis bacteria to stabilize and prevent coal particles from entering the air. The findings demonstrated a decrease in the amount of coal dust entering the atmosphere, and this approach had progressed substantially to improve safety in the coal mine sector. This provides an incentive for further works to be carried out to substantiate the role a technological innovation like microbial suppression play within the coal mining industry.
The study conducted by Howanitz (2005) is the second most cited paper. His research focuses on characterizing error rates on essential performance indicators in laboratory medicine. He suggested that all laboratories consider developing performance indicators and standardizing their scientific designs, and error reduction procedures. The coal mining industry can use this work to prevent mistakes made when operating industrial machinery. According to a study by Steiner and Burgess-Limerick (2013), mistakes in the operation of industrial equipment controls are a major contributor to serious injuries in the coal mining sector. He suggested that to prevent coal mine accidents, the competent authorities should enforce safety regulations and oversee the maintenance of industrial equipment flaws. A complimentary technology is the enforcing of the use of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) which can help reduce the lower minimal inhaler duct within an operation (Adjiski, Despodov, Mirakovski, & Serafimovski, 2019; Kursunoglu, Onder, & Onder, 2022; R. Liu et al., 2021). Also, they should be an increase in safety education within this Industry to meet the high standard seen within medical laboratories (Dalyan, Özkaya, PİŞKİN, ÖZTÜRK, & Sciences, 2021; Xie, Yang, Wang, & Wang, 2018). Another shortfall is there is often an absence of standardization in the mining sector leaving it prone to accidents as suggested by (Safa'at, 2018). Therefore policymakers can adopt policy documents from the laboratory department and domesticate them to meet the needs of the coal mining industry.
The third-most cited work is McMeekin et al. (2006) on information systems in Food Safety Management. He found that simple access to a variety of knowledge relevant to the types of pathogens commonly found in foods and the impact of environmental conditions on those bacteria has undoubtedly greatly helped the capacity to control microbiological food safety risks. However, the reverse is seen within the mining industry as operations are often considered patent and not open source for similar industry players to adapt and improve. This has instigated ad-hoc adoption of different safety technology with minimal optimization.
The study by Cao et al. (2017) is the fourth-most-cited article. They investigated the explosive mechanism of coal dust by evaluating explosion severity parameters. It was proposed that the airflow of the dust explosion was more relevant in the secondary explosion of dust in a closed chamber than in a half-closed chamber. However, analytical estimations remain inadequate and challenging due to a lack of experimental data and the complexities involved in selecting many safety-related components. To overcome this problem, more data and the development of numerical tools are required. A three-dimensional numerical simulation method based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was established with the recent development of enhanced processing resources (Di Sarli, Russo, Sanchirico, & Di Benedetto, 2014; Kahveci & Taymaz, 2018; Nishida, Beale, Pharoah, de Haart, & Blum, 2018). This technology has the potential to become a significant tool for the design of safety measures, eventually replacing the usage of standard empirical calculations and charts.
The fifth most cited work is Brown et al. (2000). The study considered the application of microbiological testing in beef safety systems. They found that Microbiological testing for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point purposes must employ the enumeration of indicator organisms rather than pathogen detection. However, Brown et al. (2000) conducted related research in the coal mine safety industry on the enzyme-induced carbonate precipitation technology to reduce coal dust pollution in open-pit coal mines. The result indicated that biological dust suppressant is non-toxic and weakly alkaline based on its corrosive and toxicological qualities. This demonstrates that enzyme-induced carbonate precipitation is a promising method for reducing coal dust in the coal mine safety industry.