VOSviewer
VOSviewer is a software tool for constructing and visualizing bibliometric networks. These
networks may for instance include journals, researchers, or individual publications, and they
can be constructed based on citation, bibliographic coupling, co-citation, or co-authorship
relations. VOSviewer also offers text mining functionality that can be used to construct and
visualize co-occurrence networks of important terms extracted from a body of scientific
literature.
-- Official website: https://www.vosviewer.com/
It is a free software can download from its official website with its manual
(https://www.vosviewer.com/documentation/Manual_VOSviewer_1.6.15.pdf)
Data preparation
Identify keywords of the chosen topic
Draw articles by the keywords from databases
Purposeful visualisation
Determine the purposes of the visualisation
Select associated functions
Layout optimisation
Determine the expected level of details upon
your interpretation intentions
Change parameters
1. Data preparation (database Scopus for example)

Search the keywords
Use “” to include Combined keywords
Use * to include waste & wastes

Results of the keywords

Narrow down the scope with left sidebar
Publication year, Language, Document type are the most generic filter parameters.

Export selected date
2. Purposeful visualisation

Import CSV document

The applications and analysis units of VOSviewer
Keywords analysis for the example in this introduction, you can explore other applications by
yourself with the Manual

Network Visualization shows the relationships and occurrence of keywords

Overlay visualisation depicts the freshness of keywords

Density visualisation displays the research hotspots
3.Layout optimisation

The searched term would be obviously the most influential topics that it is better to be
removed to only show the landscape of the related research topics under the searched
keywords framed theme.
4 keywords clusters: Blue-waste management, Green-environment focused, Red-demolition
waste treatment, Yellow-recycling applications focused