Scholarly output on drone research: A bibliometric study

Abstract

Drones have key applications in surveillance and security, especially in defence. In recent years, drones are also being used in photography, disaster management, traffic tracking, logistics etc. Use of drones in delivery businesses is seen as a progressive opportunity and library system is also not spared from it. A few libraries and book houses are trying to boost their book delivery service by keeping drone as an important mode of delivery, particularly in the remote areas. The time is not far behind when we may find drone as an essential part of our life. Through this study, an effort has made to quantify the research productivity on drone at the global level. The study accommodated publications on drones published from 1968 to 2017 (50 year). The publications related data were retrieved from the Scopus citation index and computed in MS – Excel. Various bibliometric techniques were used to find out the growth rate of publications (16.00 % annually), citation analysis (58.33 % cited rate), authorship pattern and most productive countries etc.