Research trend on the use of mercury in gold mining: Literature review and bibliometric analysis

Abstract

This study was conducted to analyze scientific trends about mercury-related applications in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) through a bibliometric study on the Google Scholar database using VOSviewer. To support the analysis, this study was also completed with a literature review of ASGM. Based on the results of data using the keywords of "mercury", "gold mining", "particle technology", and "adsorption" using Publish or Perish from 2018 to 2022, 988 articles were detected and selected from Google Scholar. The results of searching data for the last 5 years showed that publications on related keywords increased in 2020 to 239 publications and decreased in 2021 and 2022 to 210 and 121, respectively. To support the analysis, three visualization forms in the data mapping analysis were completed: network visualization, overlay visualization, and density visualization. The results of this study are expected to assist researchers in recognizing global research trends regarding the proposed keywords that can be used as a reference in conducting further research