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. 2019 Dec 6;16(24):4972.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph16244972.

Slip and Fall Incidents at Work: A Visual Analytics Analysis of the Research Domain

Jie Li  1   2 , Floris Goerlandt  3 , Kai Way Li  4
Affiliations

Slip and Fall Incidents at Work: A Visual Analytics Analysis of the Research Domain

Jie Li et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

Slip and fall incidents at work remain an important class of injury and fatality causing mechanisms. An extensive body of safety research has accumulated on this topic. This article presents an analysis of this research domain. Two bibliometric visualization tools are applied: VOSviewer and HistCite. Samples of 618 slip and fall related articles are obtained from the Web of Science database. Networks of institutions, authors, terms, and chronological citation relationships are established. Collaboration and research activities of the slip and fall research community show that most contributors are from the United States, with the (now closed) Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety the most influential research organization. The results of a term clustering analysis show that the slip and fall research can be grouped into three sub-domains: epidemiology, gait/biomechanics, and tribology. Of these, early research focused mainly on tribology, whereas research on gait/biomechanics and epidemiological studies are relatively more recent. Psychological aspects of slip and fall incident occurrence represent a relatively under-investigated research topic, in which future contributions may provide new insights and safety improvements. Better linking of this research domain with other principles and methods in safety science, such as safety management and resilience, may also present valuable future development paths.

Keywords: HistCite; VOSviewer; bibliometric analysis; citation network; knowledge mapping; slip and fall.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The distribution of the sample data based on the Web of Science Categories.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Annual publications in the slip and fall research domain, based on the sample data.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Flowchart illustrating the process sequence applied in this research.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Clusters in the co-authorship network of slip and fall research.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Authors’ average publication years in the co-authorship network of slip and fall research.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Clusters in the institutions’ collaboration network in slip and fall research; the figure was analysed by VOSviewer, and visualized by Gephi [44].
Figure 7
Figure 7
Institutions’ average publication years in the collaboration network of slip and fall research, red indicates more recent contributions, blue indicates older contributions (the figure was analysed by VOSviewer and visualized by Gephi).
Figure 8
Figure 8
Terms cluster of the slip and fall research domain.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Terms average year distribution of slip and fall research domain.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Chronological citation network among highly cited slip and fall publications.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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