Examining the usage, citation, and diffusion patterns of bibliometric mapping software: A comparative study of three tools

This study investigates the use, citation and diffusion of three bibliometric mapping software tools (CiteSpace, HistCite and VOSviewer) in scientific papers. We first conduct a content analysis of a sample of 481 English core journal papers—i.e., papers from journals deemed central to their respective disciplines—in which at least one of these tools is mentioned. This allows us to understand the predominant mention and citation practices...