A bibliometric analysis of human reliability research

Abstract Due to the rapid development of scientific technology, human influence is considered as a dominant factor that affects the occurrence of various accidents, while the promotion of human reliability is useful for the reduction of human errors. In order to uncover the research characteristics and development trends in the human reliability research domain, a bibliometric analysis of scientific documents was carried out via the Web of Science Core Collection database. In general, a total of 1463 documents on human reliability were indexed between 1984 and 2018, covering 3287 authors, 533 journals, 71 countries, and 1364 institutions. The studies related to human reliability have a significant increase from the earliest 4 in 1984 to 137 articles in 2018. The USA, UK, and China made the three most contributions to the literature associated with human reliability research. In terms of the major sources of human reliability publications, Reliability Engineering & System Safety, Safety Science, Microelectronics and Reliability, Applied Ergonomics, and Ergonomics were the five most active journals in this domain. Park, Jung, Kirwan, Seong, and Zhang greatly devoted to human reliability publications. According to the frequency of keywords, the hottest topics in human reliability domain focus on human reliability analysis, human error, model, ergonomics, human reliability assessment, patient safety, and nuclear power plant, etc. The primary themes in human reliability research concentrate on the human reliability analysis methods, system reliability analysis, human error identification, and human performance in human-machine system, etc. Future research should emphasize human factor experimentation, cognitive model, the development of human reliability analysis methods, and human reliability analysis in information technology.