Research trends in ergonomics, industrial safety and health: semantic network and topic analyses

Abstract

We evaluated the research trends in ergonomics, industrial safety and health from the 1980s to the present. In the ergonomics area, keywords and abstracts from five journals were analyzed. For industrial safety and health, six journal databases were evaluated. A frequency analysis, a semantic network of keywords and a topic network of abstracts were conducted. The results of ergonomics showed that ‘macro-ergonomics’ and ‘manual material handling’ were the most popular topics, and ‘ergonomic’ and ‘electromyography’ were the most cited keywords. ‘Posture’ and ‘biomechanics’ were the most frequently used with high centrality. The results of industrial safety and health showed that ‘job stress’ and ‘organizational safety’ were the most popular topics, and ‘occupational exposure’ and ‘occupational health’ were the most cited keywords. ‘Dust’ and ‘exposure’ were frequently used with high centrality. The results would be helpful in understanding the trends of research efforts and foreseeing trends of future research.

Keywords:

• research trend
• semantic network
• topic analysis
• ergonomics
• industrial safety
• industrial health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Research Foundation of Korea [grant number 2021R1I1A1A01050440], [grant number 2022R1F1A1069384].