A visual knowledge map analysis of mine fire research based on CiteSpace

Mine fire has always been a serious disaster in coal industry; many academic achievements have poured out in the past two decades for solving this problem. In this study, visual analysis was conducted to grasp the hotspots and development trend of mine fire research. Papers that published in 1999–2020 were retrieved as the data basis from Web of Science, and CiteSpace was used to carry out knowledge map analysis. The results shown that number of papers has increased steadily since 2005 and achieved explosive growth since 2014. Deng J is the first published author among many scholars. China, the USA, and Australia are active areas in mine fire research and China University of Mining and Technology ranks first in this field. The highest co-occurrence frequency keyword is “spontaneous combustion.” International Journal of Coal Geology and Fuel provide guidance for mine fire research. Fire prevention technology, low carbon, ecology, and sustainable development are the hot research in recent years. The prevention and control of mine fire from combustion mechanism should be further strengthened.