A quantitative and qualitative study on research developments in automation field is conducted based on the papers published in Acta Automatica Sinica during 2011 to 2016 from the aspects of productivity, citations, topics, usage, and coauthorship networks. The most productive authors, institutions, and the most cited papers, most popular papers, as well as the most frequent topics and their trends are identified and analyzed. Social network methods are employed for revealing collaboration patterns among contributors through author-level coauthorship. It is indicated that the automation field has made tremendous progress and Acta Automatica Sinica has contributed significantly to accelerate the growth over that period. The findings can help scientists in automation field to understand research developments, enhance academic exchanges,and promote collaborations as well.

Nowadays, automation science and technology based on automatic control and information processing has be-come an essential impetus to productive forces and human life. So a comprehensive understanding of the latest research progress in this discipline is essential for its significant reference value to scholars and research institutions. In this paper, the automa-tion science and technology discipline is divided into five re-search fields, which are specifically defined as control theory and engineering, pattern recognition and intelligent systems, mea-surement technology and automatic equipment, navigation and guidance, and systems engineering. Each field is depicted by analyzing and mapping the data from 46 242 academic articles published on 88 journals during 2011～2013. The results show that the research interests are different between domestic and abroad, and that the domestic institutions and ethnic Chinese scholars have played an important role in promoting the devel-opment of automation science and technology.