A Bibliometric Study Analyzing Research Contributions And Patterns In Heritage Conservation

Abstract

Heritage conservation, often referred to as historic preservation or heritage preservation, is the process of safeguarding and maintaining objects, buildings, landscapes, and other artifacts that hold cultural, historical, or architectural importance. This encompasses a diverse array of both physical and non-physical cultural assets, including but not limited to, ancient structures, archaeological locations, monuments, artifacts, customs, and cultural environments. A bibliometric analysis was conducted to ascertain research tendencies and contributions in the field of Heritage Conservation. The study primarily investigated themes, authors, publications, and organizations.  The Scopus database was employed to retrieve the data, resulting in the identification of 357 papers after applying filters. The five leading journals in the field of heritage conservation from 2003 to 2023 were "Sustainability Switzerland" (with 69 published articles), "Geoheritage" (with 55 published articles), "Journal of Sustainable Tourism" (with 13 published articles), "Geojournal of Tourism and Geosites" (with 10 published articles), and "Journal of Heritage Tourism" (with nine published articles). The most commonly used keywords in the analyzed papers were "Tourism," "Geotourism," "Conservation," "Heritage tourism," "Heritage," "Geoheritage," "Heritage Conservation," "Cultural Heritage," "sustainable development," "Sustainability," "Geoconservation," "Heritage Management," "Geopark," "Sustainable Tourism," "China," "Geosites," and "Tourism Development."