Research Situation Analysis of Global 3D Printing based on

Bibliometrics

Duanwu Yan

, Yue Chen

, Shuang Lv

and Biao Ma

1,2 d

School of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

Internet Network Information Center, Jiangsu Provincial Education Examination Authority, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China

Keywords: 3D Printing; Bibliometrics; Development Trend; Visual Analysis.

Abstract: The research on the development trend of 3D printing technology is helpful to provide useful competitive

intelligence for the practical application and industrial development of 3D printing. Based on the web of

Sciences core database, this paper uses the visual analysis software CiteSpace to analysis the annual number

of papers, core authors, discipline layout, institutions, countries and keywords, and comprehensively reveals

the research trend, research capacity and research hotspots in the field of global 3D printing from 2011 to

2020. The results show that the overall development trend of global 3D printing shows an increasing trend.

The United States, China, Britain and other countries are at the leading level of technological development,

and most of countries have close international cooperation relations, advanced countries are at the centre of

cooperation network, bioengineering and printing materials will continue to become research hotspots.

1 INTRODUCTION

3D printing technology (3D printing), also known as

additive manufacturing technology, is a technology

based on the principle of layering / accumulation,

using computer-aided technology, selecting

appropriate materials based on digital model files,

printing layer by layer according to the two-

dimensional digital path of each layer, and finally

superimposing to form a three-dimensional solid

(Shahrubudin, Lee, Ramlan, 2019).

Compared with traditional processing and

manufacturing technology, 3D printing technology is

a revolutionary innovation technology in the

production and manufacturing industry. It can not

only save materials and improve material utilization,

but also reduce time cost and meet consumer needs to

a greater extent. With the rapid development of 3D

printing technology, more and more kinds of

materials are involved in this technology, the 3D solid

structure is more complex, the accuracy is also

improving. Therefore, the application scope of 3D

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9893-2302

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4316-4868

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3613-9990

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0937-5602

printing technology has been further expanded. At

present, the research on 3D printing technology in

Europe, America and other countries is relatively

mature, which is applied to aerospace, automobile

manufacturing, medical treatment, industry,

construction, biotechnology and other fields, and

large-scale marketization has formed the

corresponding industrial chain. Although the research

on 3D printing technology in China started late, the

great potential of 3D printing technology has been

valued by a large number of researchers, and China's

3D printing technology has developed rapidly. There

are many researches on the key technologies and

development status of 3D printing applied in various

fields at home and abroad, but there are few

researches on the analysis of international 3D printing

technology from the perspective of journal papers.

Therefore, based on bibliometrics, this paper studies

and analyzes the journal papers of international 3D

printing technology from different angles, analyzes

the publication of papers, author cooperation,

countries, institutions and discipline distribution,

especially studies the hot spots and trends of 3D

Yan, D., Chen, Y., Lv, S. and Ma, B.

Research Situation Analysis of Global 3D Printing based on Bibliometrics.

DOI: 10.5220/0011342600003437

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Public Management and Big Data Analysis (PMBDA 2021), pages 269-274

ISBN: 978-989-758-589-0

269

printing technology according to the keyword co-

occurrence analysis, so as to provide some basis and

reference for the research work of scientific

researchers.

2 MATERIALS AND METHODS

2.1 Data Collection

In this study, we took the Web of Science Sore

Collection as the data source, selected advanced

retrieval. The theme for retrieval was set as"3D print"

or "three dimension print". The retrieval time range

was set from 2011 to 2020, the language was set to

“English”, the document type was set to "article". The

articles retrieved from the database were exported to

the local database in the format of txt. The irrelevant

articles were manually eliminated, and then we

merged these articles and removed duplicates.

Finally, 24082 articles are determined.

2.2 Statistical Methods

Based on bibliometrics, this research made statistical

analysis and visual analysis of all articles on the

theme of "3D printing" from 2011 to 2020, so as to

reveal the research theme, development trend and

frontier in the research of 3D printing technology.

Statistical analysis mainly presented the number of

articles published, authors and countries. Visual

analysis used the software “CiteSpace” to analysis the

author cooperation, institutional cooperation,

national cooperation, keyword co-occurrence and

other analysis and finally formed visual maps.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 Analysis of Papers’ Annual Amount

The number of published papers within a certain time

range can be used as a measure of the development

trend of a field, and intuitively show the development

level, development speed and activity of research in

this field. Figure 1 shows the output of global 3D

printing core papers from 2011 to 2020, with a total

number of 24082, showing a continuous upward

trend as a whole. From 2011 to 2014, the average

development level of global 3D printing technology

was in the embryonic stage. Although the number of

papers was small, the technology received attention

and developed rapidly. From 2015 to 2020, with the

upsurge of research enthusiasm, global 3D printing

research developed rapidly. Although the annual

amount of papers growth rate decreased slightly since

2017, the number of published papers was still

growing steadily. It can be seen that in the future, the

steady development trend of 3D printing technology

research will continue, and the technology is

becoming more and more mature.

Figure 1: Number and types of papers published from 2011

to 2020.

3.2 Analysis of Discipline Layout

Table 1: WoS Categories of “3D print” research papers

from 2011 to 2020.

SN WoS Categories Quantity Proportion

Engineering 8426 34.99%

2 Materials

Science

8100 33.64%

Chemistry 3911 16.24%

4 Science &

Technolo

3631 15.08%

Physics 3281 13.62%

6 Electrical &

Electronic

3084 12.81%

Physics Applied 2857 11.86%

8 Compute

Science

2468 10.25%

9 Nanoscience &

Nanotechnolo

2437 10.12%

Biomedical 1714 7.12%

Based on the classification of web of science, the

scientific layout of papers on the research theme of

"3D printing" is analyzed. Table 1 shows the top 10

disciplines in the global paper category in the field of

3D printing technology from 2011 to 2020. The two

disciplines with the largest proportion are

engineering and materials science, with 8426 and

8100 relevant literatures respectively, covering

34.99% and 33.64% of the papers issued in the field

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of 3D printing technology, followed by Chemistry

(16.24%) and science and Technology (15.08%).

3.3 Core Authors Analysis

The research on the structural network between high-

yield authors in a field is helpful to understand the

cooperative relationship between core authors and

provide reference basis for academic exchange,

international cooperation and talent introduction

(White H D 2003). Figure 2 display the network map

with the author as the node. The larger the node, the

higher the frequency of the authors in the research

field. The thicker the line, the higher the frequency of

cooperation. As shown in Fig. 2 and table 2, there are

15 high-frequency authors in the field of 3D printing

technology (frequency ≥ 35), including Ianzhong Fu

(64) published the research on 3D bioprinting

methods for the first time in 2015 (Gao, He, Fu,

2015), and the formed a strong cooperative research

team with Yong He (46) and others. Dongwoo CHO

(62) has been cited 902 times at most, and his team is

good at physics, chemistry, bioengineering and other

fields; Dichen Li (60) the paper was first published in

2013, and the highest number of citations reached

402. These high-frequency authors are basically in

the center of the network, and the cooperative

relationship between high-frequency authors is

closer.

Figure 2: Author Cooperation Network Map.

Table 2: TOP 5 Key Authors.

F Centrality Author Year

Highest

Citations

64 0.02

IANZHONG

2015 285

62 0.03 DONGWOO CHO 2014 902

60 0.01 DICHEN LI 2013 402

46 0.02 YONG HE 2015 285

46 0.01

JACQUES

LALEVEE

2017 75

3.4 Research Institutions Analysis

This paper took the research institution of the first

author as the object to make statistics on the top 20

research institutions in the field of 3D printing

technology (Table 3). In terms of the number of

papers published, China's research institutions

account for a large proportion. The Chinese Academy

of Sciences accounts for 2.3% of the world's total

number of papers. Institutions with a large number of

papers published in other countries mainly include

Nanyang Technological University, Massachusetts

Institute of technology, Georgia Institute of

technology, etc. We used CiteSpace to processes all

data to form a cooperative relationship network

between research institutions, as shown in Figure 3.

There is less cooperation between research

institutions in China, and more tend to inter agency

internal cooperation or small group cooperation. The

relationship between research institutions in other

countries is relatively close, with more partners and a

wider range of cooperation. The cooperation centers

of the research institute network mainly include

Harvard University, North Polytech University,

Chinese Academy of Sciences, University Western

Australia, King Abdulaziz University, etc.

Figure 3: Institution Cooperation Network Map.

Research Situation Analysis of Global 3D Printing based on Bibliometrics

271

Table 3: Top 20 Research Institutions.

SN Quantity Institution SN Quantity Institution

1 559 Chinese Academy of Sciences 11 173 University of Illinois

2 325 Tsinghua University 12 172

Huazhong University of

Science an

Technolo

3 306

Nanyang Technological

Universit

13 172 Harvard University

4 303 Zhejiang University 14 167 Sichuan University

5 274 Shanghai Jiao Tong University 15 163 University College London

6 243 Xi An Jiao Tong University 16 159 University of Maryland

7 240

Massachusetts Institute of

Technolo

17 147 Seoul National University

8 239 Georgia Institute of Technology 18 145 Beihang University

9 187 Peking University 19 145 Swiss Fed Inst Technol

10 183 National University of Singapore 20 135 Imperial College London

3.5 National Layout Analysis

Use quantitative analysis to explore the productivity

and influence of relevant countries in the field of 3D

printing technology. After searching and processing,

24082 papers come from 153 countries, and there are

461 cooperative relationships. Table 4 shows the top

ten countries in the total number of papers issued in

the field of 3D printing technology in the world, and

Figure 4 shows the national cooperation network. In

terms of productivity, the top three in the total number

of papers issued are the United States, China and the

United Kingdom. The number of papers issued by the

United States and China far exceeds that of other

countries, accounting for 26.82% and 23.94% of the

world respectively, more than three times that of the

United Kingdom and Germany. They are the main

force of research in this field. In terms of influence

(centrality and total number of other citations). The

centrality and total number of other citations in the

United States, Britain and Germany are high, which

obviously has a great influence and plays a central

role in the national cooperation network. China's total

number of other citations is high, but its centrality is

low, reflecting that

China has a low global influence

in the research field of 3D printing technology, tends

to domestic cooperation or small group cooperation,

which needs to be improved Further deepen

cooperation.

Table 4: Top 10 Countries.

SN Quantity Centrality Country Year All Citations

1 6458 0.13 USA 2011 245949

2 5765 0.02 CHINA. 2011 135517

3 1692 0.09 ENGLAND 2011 46521

4 1687 0.12 GERMANY 2011 51765

5 1581 0.04 SOUTH KOREA 2011 36287

6 1007 0.02 AUSTRALIA 2011 37510

7 951 0.12 ITALY 2011 26192

8 906 0.10 FRANCE 2011 21818

9 860 0.05 CANADA 2011 21362

10 752 0.07 JAPAN 2011 13078

3.6 Keywords Analysis

Keywords are the author's highly concentrated and

summarized research content and core ideas of the

article, reflecting the research direction and value of

the article. High frequency keywords are often used

to explore hot issues in a research field. In this paper,

the word frequency statistics of keywords in the

research field of 3D printing technology are carried

out, and the keyword co-occurrence analysis is

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carried out through CiteSpace software to generate

the keyword co-occurrence map of 3D printing

technology research. Keywords with high frequency

at home and abroad include "3D printing", "fabric",

"additional manufacturing", "design", "mechanical

property", "model", "scaffold", "behavior",

"composite", "system", etc. it can be seen that 3D

printing technology has been widely used in

manufacturing engineering, especially in aerospace

(Tan, Fang 2016), biotechnology (Mao, Gu, 2018)

and other fields with high requirements for

mechanical properties.

Figure 4: Country Cooperation Network Map.

Figure 5: Keywords Clustering Map.

The keyword clustering map shows the main

research hotspot in the research field of global 3D

printing technology. As shown in Figure 5, at this

stage, the research in the field of 3D printing

technology is roughly summarized into 26 clustering

labels. It can be seen that the research categories

involved in 3D printing technology are rich and cover

a wide range of fields. This paper can be roughly

summarized into 3D printing technology (such as

melt deposition modeling, selective laser, accuracy),

3D bioprinting (such as bone tissue engineering,

cardiovascular tissue, biological cells, etc.), 3D

printing materials (such as graphene, polylactic acid,

carbon nanotubes), 3D printing performance (such as

mechanical properties, mechanical properties,

process parameters).

Table 5: Distribution of Research Hotspots in Each Stage.

Keywords Strength Begin-End 2011 - 2020

face

reco

nition

43.17 2011-2015 ▃▃▃▂▂▂

rapi

rotot

41.84 2011-2016

▃▃▃▂▂▂

image 25.52 2011-2014

▃▃▃▂▂▂

lithography 20.28 2011-2017 ▃▃▃▃▃▂

fabrication 19.13 2011-2013

▃▃▂▂▂▂

cell 14.30 2011-2015

▃▃▃▂▂▂

nanostructure 8.82 2011-2015 ▃▃▃▂▂▂

iological

ert

6.15 2013-2015

▂▃▃▂▂▂

tissue 14.24 2014-2016

▂▃▃▂▂▂

chemical

nthesis

11.77 2014-2017 ▂▃▃▃▂▂

tissue

ineerin

8.37 2014-2016 ▂▃▃▂▂▂

biology 7.29 2014-2016

▂▃▃▂▂▂

extracellula

matrix

7.45 2015-2016 ▂▂▂▃▂▂

electrochemica

l detection

6.10 2016-2017 ▂▂▂▃▂▂

fuse

osition

6.02 2016-2018

▂▂▂▃▃▂

fluid 4.90 2016-2018

▂▂▂▃▃▂

marrow

stromal cell

4.61 2016-2018 ▂▂▂▃▃▂

transistor 5.56 2017-2018 ▂▂▂▂▃▂

ultrasound 5.56 2017-2018

▂▂▂▂▃▂

gelation 3.49 2017-2018 ▂▂▂▂▃▂

porous material3.30 2017-2018 ▂▂▂▂▃▂

aerogel 6.07 2018-2020

▂▂▂▂▃▃

energy

harvestin

4.69 2018-2020 ▂▂▂▂▃▃

olyme

-matrix

composites

mcs

)

4.41 2018-2020 ▂▂▂▂▃▃

architecte

material

4.14 2018-2020

▂▂▂▂▃▃

nanomaterial 3.01 2018-2020 ▂▂▂▂▃▃

Keyword emergence analysis refers to the

analysis of words with high frequency of change or

more times in the published literature in a research

field in a certain period of time. It is often used to

identify the research frontier or predict the

development trend. In this paper, 26 emergent words

Research Situation Analysis of Global 3D Printing based on Bibliometrics

273

with high emergent value are obtained by CiteSpace

software. Combined with the further analysis of

emergent intensity and duration, this paper explored

the frontier problems and evolution trend of 3D

printing technology research. According to table 5,

the development of 3D printing from 2011 to 2020 is

divided into three stages. From 2011 to 2013, the

research of this stage mainly focuses on 3D printing

technology, including stereo lithography, rapid

prototyping, image processing. From 2013 to 2018,

the research focusing on bioscience, tissue

engineering and other hot spots began to appear;

Since 2018, 3D printing materials such as hydrogels,

carbon nanotubes and polymers have become the

mainstream of research.

4 CONCLUSIONS

With the help of the bibliometric analysis software

CiteSpaces, this paper analyzed the articles related to

3D printing included in the web of science core

collection from 2011 to 2020. This paper

systematically and comprehensively expounded from

the six perspectives of annual document volume,

discipline layout, core authors, research institutions,

national distribution and keywords, explored the hot

spots and overall situation in the field of 3D printing

through keyword cluster analysis and keyword

emergence analysis. To sum up, in the past decade,

3D printing technology has been booming at an

amazing speed, mainly used in engineering, materials

and chemistry. The research countries are widely

distributed and the overall international cooperation

relationship is close.

The visual situation analysis of 3D printing

technology research can provide reference for the

development of 3D printing in China in the aspects of

introducing talents, carrying out international

cooperation and focusing on research hotspots.

Compared with other advanced countries, the overall

level of 3D printing research in China needs to be

improved, which is mainly reflected in the large

number of articles published in China but few highly

cited articles, the degree of international cooperation

is low and China is not at the center of the national

cooperation network. Therefore, China needs to

enhance the national strategic position of innovative

technologies such as 3D printing, strengthen the R &

D of key technologies, deepen international

cooperation, grasp research hotspots and future

trends, optimize the industrial chain, provide

assistance for talent training and rapid and high-

quality development of 3D printing technology, and

move forward to deeper research.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

*This research was financially supported by

Humanity Social Sciences Fund Project of the

Ministry of Education (Grant NO. 19YJA870015)

and Jiangsu Province Social Science Fund Project

(Grant NO. 17TQB009).

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