Unveiling the Past, Current and Future of Global Sustainable Livelihoods Research by Visual and Quantitative Analysis

Abstract Sustainable Livelihoods (SLs) is now a high-priority field in global environmental change research, becoming one of the key research paradigms in sustainability science increasingly and an important component of the Sustainable Development Goals. A Scientometrics analysis based on Science Citation Index-Expanded was performed to understand the research trends and areas in SLs studies. A total of 6441 papers related to SLs studies and 265, 759 references published from 1991 to 2020 were selected as the research objects. Using advanced quantitative analysis tools such as CiteSpace and VOSviewer, we quantify and visualize the characteristics and evolution of the literature in the field of SLs research, to clarify the historical research characteristics, knowledge base, and future research trends. The results show that the annual number of documents increased exponentially since 1991. Ecological sciences and ecology were the most popular Web of Science research areas. The institution with the greatest research documents and most citations was the CGIAR. The most influential journal is Word Development. Singh R.K., Shackleton C.M., was the most productive author. Six clusters of research areas were determined by keyword co-occurrence analysis. The results of the evolution of research hotspots show that the four tags currently still active. We also detected 11 directions of SLs research studies based on the keywords’ score relevance, which has allowed the iden-tification of future lines of research with more importance. These results can help related researchers better understand the past current and future of SLs research studies, which is significant for achieving livelihoods sustainability.